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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26018230">In Silico</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortuosity/pseuds/tortuosity'>tortuosity</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Full Bottle and Bones to Break [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Blind Betrayal Spoilers (Fallout 4), Brotherhood of Steel (Fallout), Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Military Background, POV Second Person, Tragedy, War Crimes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 05:53:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>42,402</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26018230</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortuosity/pseuds/tortuosity</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Strange to think the moment you found Piper’s little newspaper was when your life really fell apart. Not the war, not the bombs. Not even Vault 111. No, your path to hell started with a slightly damp pile of paper on a bench in Diamond City.</p><p>(A series of interconnected moments detailing one Sole Survivor's feelings on synths. Among other things.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cait/Female Sole Survivor, Paladin Danse &amp; Female Sole Survivor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Full Bottle and Bones to Break [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1808800</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>97</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>39</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Interphase</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For tanaleth, who always encourages my angst-ridden endeavors, no matter how painful &lt;3</p><p>This particular fic is focused on Maria Gutierrez, my (more than a little damaged, swapped careers with Nate) SoSu featured in the other fics of this series. Unlike those other fics, her relationship with Cait takes more of a backseat here, so those hungry for strong ship feels might want to check those ones out instead.</p><p>Note for accuracy: I played a little fast and loose with some of the military details, given the setting. That said, I'm learning as I go, so if any of my errors are particularly egregious, please drop me a line so I can fix it.</p><p>Playlist <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4gWpJmjof3leawY19Vehn1?si=CjokMjb_T3ClASZyE8el7Q">here</a>, for those into that sort of thing.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When did you first learn about synths? It’s difficult to remember—not that you know why you’re thinking about this <em>now</em>, staring down the sights of a revolver with your finger resting on the trigger. It feels like synths have always been with you; on the periphery, in the background, the bogeyman of the post-apocalypse. The new Red Scare. They didn’t seem real, not at the time. That sort of thing was science fiction shit, like those pulp magazines you used to read at the Red Rocket while your car got washed. <em>The Rogue Assaultron!</em> and <em>March of the Murderous Mechano-Men from Mars!</em> Ah, that jogs your memory. The first time you heard the word “synth” was from a different, equally questionable rag: <em>Publick Occurrences</em>.</p><p>Strange to think the moment you found Piper’s little newspaper was when your life really fell apart. Not the war, not the bombs. Not even Vault 111. No, your path to hell started with a slightly damp pile of paper on a bench in Diamond City. You almost ignored it; it’s not like the modern Commonwealth is lacking in random heaps of trash. But after a four hour march—to fucking <em>Fenway Park</em>; it still boggles the mind—through newly uncharted territory with déjà vu clouding your mind, armed with only a switchblade and a homemade rifle you filched from a corpse, you were exhausted. A bench was as good a place as any to rest.</p><p>You had watched a violent storm front roll over Boston from just outside of Lexington, and though it was long gone by the time you arrived, it left Diamond City a walled-in mud puddle, reeking of garbage and, inexplicably, wet dog. That’s one of the many things you’ve learned in the months since the vault: the future smells like shit. <em>Radioactive</em> isn’t the only kind of decay here. It settles into unwashed living bodies, into bloated cadavers festering in the perpetual summer heat, even into the few species of flowers that made it through the fallout. You’ve adjusted since, your nose and brain adapting to the unique funk of this world, but back then? You were always on the verge of nausea. It was first trimester morning sickness all over again—one of the many cruel ironies this place would bestow on you.</p><p>Your feet hurt. A trip like the one from Sanctuary Hills to Diamond City used to be a piece of cake; you had harder rucks in basic. But retirement had made you soft, and you paid for that softness with blisters. You loosened your boot laces and wondered how long it would take for the calluses to build back up.</p><p>At least remembering how to shoot was easy—a surprise, given you only made it to the range a handful of times after you left the Army. Too bad you sold your handguns when Shaun was born. The pipe rifle slung over your shoulder worked to discourage giant bugs and the odd scavenger hoping for an easy fight, but it seemed just as likely to blow up in your hands as fire a round. You missed your AER12. You missed a lot of things, if you were being honest with yourself. But you hadn’t learned how to be honest with yourself yet, had you? So you just missed your guns.</p><p>People milled around what appeared to be a marketplace of sorts, if the ramshackle storefronts and raucous shouts advertising prices and wares were any indication. The adults cast suspicious glances at you; the children outright stopped and stared. Something about you screamed “outsider,” though you had no idea what it was. Couldn’t be your clothes. You had traded your pristine Vault suit for a threadbare pair of jeans and a ragged t-shirt as soon as you could—that blue synthetic material on your body made your heart race and your skin crawl just to look at it. You peeled yourself out of it like it was infested with fire ants and shoved it into your dead neighbors’ dresser to be forgotten, praying you’d never have to see one of those suits again. Surely without it you looked just as disheveled as any of the natives.</p><p>Or was it something in your posture that gave you away? You could take the girl out of the Army but not the Army out of the girl, or so they said, and you couldn’t help but carry yourself the way your father had taught you as soon as you could stand. First Sergeant David Gutierrez would have no slouching in his house. The people here had no such training; they slunk through alleyways and hunched over steaming cups of noodles on the stools circling the food stall in the center of the market. There was an unease to them, a skittishness, even in the children. You tried to mimic them, rounding your shoulders and sagging your back against the bench. Your metal-infused spine protested by sending a hot flash of pain through your right ass cheek to your knee. Wonderful. Suppressing a grimace, you returned to your previous position, stares be damned. It wasn’t the first time you felt out of place, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.</p><p>You chose to focus on the architecture—a word that was, perhaps, too generous for the buildings of Diamond City. But you had to admit, there was an ingenuity to it all: the cardboard and corrugated metal bent into walls and roofs, held up with what looked like pieces of bridge girders; the wooden pallets, half-sunken in the mud, forming a path through the streets; the strings of lights radiating like wheel spokes from the noodle stall to the roofs of the surrounding shops. And that was only in what used to be the field. The stands contained a dizzying array of platforms and walkways and stilt houses, none of which looked especially structurally sound, but the way the people down here glared up at it seemed to indicate a degree of elevation-based social stratification. All of it was protected by what you once knew as “The Green Monster,” what the people here deified and called “The Wall”—the thing that turned Diamond City from a shanty town into a fortress.</p><p>This was the place, here within the green embrace of The Wall, that you were told you could find information about Shaun’s kidnapper. Though what form that information could take was beyond you. A bounty hunter? A police officer? A private investigator? A local barfly who knew a guy who knew a guy who was cousins with a man who had a predilection for snatching infants? The latter seemed the most likely, judging from the confusion and anarchy inherent to this wasteland. You tried leaning on the so-called “mayor” who accosted you and Piper after you weaseled your way through the gates, but he was tight-lipped. It wasn’t unexpected; you never were blessed with the gift of gab. You were a quiet, serious child who grew up to be a quiet, serious adult, and while that helped you excel as a weapons sergeant (the Army didn’t have regs on talking the enemy to death, but you imagined it wasn’t particularly efficient), it wouldn’t get you the information you so desperately needed.</p><p>Rage began to flood in, as it did so often since the day your world was ripped from you. Not the boiling, impotent rage of your teenage years; this was cold, precise, like a surgeon’s scalpel. You would kill him. The man who shot your husband and took your baby while you watched helplessly from behind the plate glass window of your cryogenic coffin. You would find him and you would kill him, but you would make that motherfucker beg for it first. You would ensure his death, whenever you saw fit to grant it, felt like a mercy. Every bit of suffering he forced upon you would be repaid tenfold, a thousandfold. </p><p>Those thoughts, ones that would have repulsed you before that sunny morning in October 2077, fueled you. You welcomed them, made a home for that anger within you, because if fury didn’t fill the hole this place had carved inside your heart, fear and despair would. Fear and despair could not find your child.</p><p>It was then, while you entertained dark, twisted fantasies of revenge, that your hand brushed across that copy of <em>Publick Occurrences</em>. Would anything have changed if you hadn’t picked it up? Did it create some sort of butterfly effect, some chain of falling dominoes ending with where you are now, gun in hand? It doesn’t matter. You picked it up and you read it.</p><p>You weren’t sure what it was supposed to be at first glance. It seemed part exposé, part history lesson, part freshman creative writing student’s term paper. A lot of hooplah over eating noodles. You checked the author’s name: Piper Wright. The woman from the gate. Hooplah personified. This Mayor McDonough obviously had something against her and, from what you were reading, the feeling was mutual. You hadn’t yet made up your mind on either of them. When she pulled you into her argument with the mayor via pointed questions regarding your opinions on free speech, you were evasive. In truth, your feelings on the press were mixed. During the war, the news conglomerates swung from jingoistic patsies to paranoid fearmongers, hiding the truth or projecting it in full bloody color depending on their whims.</p><p>You had firsthand experience inside the jaws of the media machine. After your “miraculous recovery” in Alaska, reporters hounded you before you had even left the hospital. When you repeatedly declined their requests for interviews, they tracked down Nate at his law firm. When he refused them, your parents were next—your father had the chain of command to protect him, letting his corporals deal with the paparazzi instead, but your mother was ambushed right in your childhood backyard. It was only then that you agreed to a short interview, and only in text form. No cameras. The press treated you like a juicy piece of meat in private while they painted you as a war hero in their papers and broadcasts.</p><p>But that was two hundred and thirteen years ago. No one here needed to know who you used to be, least of all Piper. You read on. There was a reference to “ghouls,” which you interpreted as some sort of unnaturally long-lived being given the context, though you couldn’t guess why they were called that or why they were apparently run out of Diamond City. Were you a ghoul? You hoped not. An interview with a resident crone followed—how many people managed to make it to old age in this place?—describing a mass murder sixty years prior. It seemed unremarkable as far as mass murders went, but then Piper pinned the killings on something called “the Institute,” and there was that word. “Synth.” An android “so advanced, it could effortlessly infiltrate human society.”</p><p>What that meant wouldn’t sink in for a long time. But in that moment, it jiggled the handle on a locked door in the back of your mind.</p><p>You caught a glimpse of a red coat approaching and looked up to see the author herself standing in front of you. “Is that one of mine?” Piper asked, jutting her chin in the direction of the paper in your hands.</p><p>“It is,” you replied, because it was true. “A good piece,” you added, because you were polite. Sometimes.</p><p>“Thanks. Not sure a lot of people around here would agree with you, though.” She sat beside you on the bench uninvited. You had the feeling Piper was not the sort of woman given to asking permission. “It’s Maria, isn’t it? You hungry? You look a little hungry. Here.”</p><p>Piper pulled something from her coat and held it out for you to take, which you did without hesitation—it had been almost two days since you stumbled out of the vault; forty-two hours of running and fighting and approximately two hours of sleep. Your last meal, you thought ruefully, was over two centuries ago. You hadn’t been brave enough to test the edibility of anything you found on the way to Diamond City. Your stomach clenched furiously as you turned the slim rectangular package around to read the label. Gum drops. The same brand that lined the Red Rocket counter where you used to read those shitty magazines, that got the boys in a tizzy when a crate of them made it up to the Anchorage base.</p><p>You never cared for them, but you tore open the wrapper anyway and shoveled two unnaturally bright oblong blobs into your mouth. When you bit down, you thought you cracked your molars.</p><p>Piper must have spotted your wince. “You gotta suck ‘em a bit before they soften up.”</p><p>Right. Two hundred year old candy. Probably not going to be as spry as it used to be. You tucked the gum drops into your cheek—diamond-hard, sugar-coated lumps of wax—and suddenly felt very, very tired.</p><p>Leaning back and setting her left ankle on her right knee, Piper waited for you to look at her again before she asked, “So, which Vault are you from?” And then she smiled while you tried not to choke on your gum drops.</p><p>You couldn’t provoke your brain into coming up with a convincing story. As good as you were at lying to yourself, you were just as bad at lying to anyone else. “Is it that obvious?” you mumbled, your voice sloppy as your saliva glands worked overtime to dissolve the rocks in your mouth. </p><p>Did that mean there were more vaults like yours? More survivors? They couldn’t have come from Vault 111—you saw all the dead residents yourself, read the status reports detailing their demise on the pod terminals. You were the only one left.</p><p>“Well, not knowing how to eat a gum drop is a pretty surefire sign. That and the whole glazed look in your eyes you’ve had going on since I first saw you. And, you know,”—she gestured at your wrist—”the Pip-Boy. Vault 81, right?”</p><p>“Not 81. 111.”</p><p>Piper’s eyebrows shot up into her press cap. “111? That’s one I haven’t heard of. Huh. Now I <em>have</em> to ask. Well, not like I wasn’t going to before, but… a new vault? That’s not something you hear every day, you know?”</p><p>Your head started to throb, in perfect time with your lower back. This Piper talked too damn much. Whatever she <em>had</em> to ask, you wanted absolutely none of it.</p><p>Not that Piper was interested in your opinion on the matter. Her hazel eyes glimmered with the thrill of journalistic discovery, and she leaned closer to you. You leaned away. “You’ve read my work,” she said, undaunted. “You know what I do. I want an interview.”</p><p>Memories of notepads and cameras filled your mind, all those hungry faces when they wheeled you out of the plane in Boston. You shook your head. “No.”</p><p>“Aw, c’mon, Blue,” she pleaded, and you had no idea if that was a nickname or some weird New World slang, nor did you care. “Just a short one? Four questions? Three?”</p><p>You stared her dead in the face then, gave her a glimpse of the madness brewing in you. You must have looked a wreck, because something new found its way into her expression—something sympathetic, maybe a little nervous. She didn’t know you, but she wanted to, and there was nothing more terrifying than that.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” you said. “I can’t.” You stood up and began to walk away.</p><p>“Maria, wait! I can help you!”</p><p>And she had you then, dangling like a fish on a line. You sighed and turned around. Piper was standing too, and smiling amiably, the fisherman with her trophy bass. “You’re looking for someone, aren’t you?” she tried. You nodded, and she reeled you all the way in: “You scratch my back, I scratch yours. I know everyone in Diamond City, which means”—she paused for dramatic effect—“I know who can help you find them. And that information is yours… <em>if</em> you just answer a few easy questions for me.”</p><p>You could’ve fought. You could’ve kept walking, tried to find answers some other way, a way that didn’t include a stranger prying into your personal life. A way that didn’t mean putting your trust in another’s hands. But you needed help. God, did you need help. The last scraps of frantic energy drained from your body into the mud, and for a moment, you looked like every other resident of Diamond City: head down, shoulders slumped, wary as a beaten dog.</p><p>“Deal,” you said. “But not here.”</p><p>Piper grinned, the battle won. “You’ll be happy to know I have just the place.”</p><p>You were not, in fact, happy at all, but you followed Piper regardless, back toward the gates and into a building you completely ignored earlier. Inside, you found a modest home clustered around an ancient printing press, the birthplace of <em>Publick Occurrences</em>. Piper chose this place to conduct her interview while her younger sister, the heir apparent to the throne of investigative journalism, studied your every move and word from the corner. It made you think of your brother. Remembering his existence wasn’t something you enjoyed doing while he was alive, and you definitely didn’t want to do it while he was two centuries postmortem. </p><p>Thankfully, Piper didn’t ask you about your family—at least not directly. She probed for your thoughts on life outside the vault (you conveniently left out the part before the bombs), and then she tried to dig for information on Shaun, but you stonewalled her. All you admitted to searching for was someone close to you.</p><p>There were things Piper didn’t need to know, and things you couldn’t bring yourself to say out loud. That these things were one and the same was probably not a coincidence.</p><p>“Okay, Blue,” Piper said at last, setting her pad and pencil aside. “I think you gave me enough to go on. Even if you made me work for it,” she muttered; you felt the tiniest swell of pride. “But fair’s fair. There’s a detective here. A real one, not affiliated with McDonough’s inept Diamond City security. He can find who you’re looking for. I can take you to his place, if you wanted to go now? Wouldn’t want you getting lost.”</p><p>You couldn’t imagine how you would possibly get lost inside Fenway Park. Maybe she was mocking you, but there was no sarcasm evident in Piper’s offer, only the sincere desire to be helpful. It was obnoxious.</p><p>“Sure. Let’s go.” The gum drops in your mouth had finally softened enough to chew; their flavor was a vague suggestion of fruit and sweetness, like they couldn’t remember what they were meant to taste like anymore.</p><p>She led you past the marketplace and down a series of backstreets. The derisive stares of passerby returned, though their ire seemed reserved for your companion rather than you. Piper took it in stride, unconcerned: smiling and waving, greeting everyone by name. But you saw the way her brows knit after each chilly response, the way her mouth drew into a thin line. You said nothing. If Piper’s detective friend was as good as she claimed, you would be out of this city by nightfall; getting caught up in the affairs of others would only distract you from your goals.</p><p>Piper stopped in front of a glowing neon sign: “Valentine Detective Agency.” <em>That</em> made you want to kick your own ass. True, you were never put on land nav duty during the war (and probably for good reason), but surely even you could’ve found a fucking bright red sign without involving a nosy muckraker like Piper.</p><p>If said nosy muckraker noticed your frustration, she didn’t show it. “Here we are!” she announced, like it wasn’t blatantly goddamn obvious. “Nicky’ll take care of you, trust me.”</p><p>You did not trust her at all. “Thanks,” you said flatly.</p><p>“I… look, can I ask you one more thing before you go? Off the record,” she added quickly. You doubted anything was ever truly off the record with Piper, but you acquiesced with a shrug. “This person you’re looking for,” she continued, “do you think they could’ve been taken by the Institute? I mean, you read my article, didn’t you? You know it’s a possibility.”</p><p>Her face contorted with worry, and it wasn’t clear if she wanted her suspicions confirmed or not. You thought of his face then: his sharp, beady eyes, the left one highlighted by a long scar from the top of his balding head down to his cheek; his beak of a nose; the way his lips twitched into a sneer when he peered through the glass at you. The man who ruined your life seemed human enough, but if Piper was right, if he was some unfathomably advanced android programmed by a higher power…</p><p>“I don’t know,” you replied, which was true. But your right hand clasped the switchblade tucked into your belt. Only one way to find out.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Prophase</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Your father taught you how to shoot when you were seven years old. It was 0630 on a Saturday and you were at the shooting range of your home-for-the-moment in Fort Hawthorne, Arizona, with sweat already starting to bead across your forehead. A line of tin cans stood before you on a sawhorse. Several of their fallen brethren lay in the dirt below, victims of your brother’s marksmanship. Anthony, thirteen years old and a walking stomach attached to a pair of perpetually rolling eyes, watched you from the other side of the yard, arms crossed.</p><p>“Maria,” your father said. “Pay attention.”</p><p>You stopped wondering how easy it would be to kick one of the chestnut-colored pebbles under your feet right into Anthony’s stupid face and stood straight, hands behind your back. “Yes, sir,” you said.</p><p>Staff Sergeant Gutierrez held a .22 hunting rifle; it looked comically tiny against his broad frame, but you were a girl, and a small one besides—it looked so much bigger and heavier than the Red Ryder BB gun you had been practicing with for the last year. You hoped you could lift it to your shoulder; if you couldn’t, you might disappoint your father, or worse, embarrass yourself in front of Anthony. But at least you already knew all the parts: the stock, the trigger guard, the front and rear sights, the bolt handle, the barrel. Everything had to be committed to memory before you were even allowed to touch it.</p><p>“This is not a toy,” he continued, pacing back and forth between you and the row of cans. “This is a weapon. If you do not respect this weapon and treat it as such, you can hurt or even kill someone with it. You will not hold this gun unless I am there beside you. When you are holding this gun, you will always keep it pointed in a safe direction. You will not aim this gun at anything unless you mean to shoot it. Is this understood?”</p><p>“Yes, sir.”</p><p>He stepped forward and held the rifle out for you to take. You did, positioning your hands on the guard where you were taught, making sure the muzzle was pointed at the dirt, just as you were told. It was heavier than your BB gun, but not as much as you feared. You bet you could shoulder it. You bet you could hit more cans than Anthony.</p><p>You learned how to load it: moving the lever, pulling back the bolt, placing the cartridge into the magazine, sliding the bolt home to chamber the round. Then, with your father’s calm, deep voice meticulously instructing your every move, you pressed the butt of the rifle to your shoulder, your right hand around the grip, your left at the front of the guard. The range went quiet as he placed a set of muffs over your ears. You lined the sights up—<em>focus on your sights, not the target</em>—level with the center can. From the corner of your eye, you spotted Anthony; he observed you intently, head cocked and lips pursed, like he didn’t believe you could do it. You could. You’d show him.</p><p>Your breathing slowed and the world around you contracted. On your next inhale, you placed your index finger on the trigger. You exhaled. And you fired.</p>
<hr/><p>The bullet ripped through the back of the man’s skull, splattering the glass observation window in front of him with blood and pieces of brain. He dropped like a marionette with cut strings. But you couldn’t stop to enjoy it; immediately on the move, you secured the perimeter while Cait did the same on the floor below. </p><p>Your back screamed from the effort of keeping it straight while maintaining a crouched position, each stab of pain another reminder to visit the doctor—whatever qualified as one here—in Diamond City. Cait was the one who informed you about him, though she warned he was more likely to stick you with chems than anything else. It was almost starting to sound appealing.</p><p>The two of you had seemingly wiped out an entire mafia on your mission to spring Valentine. Her prowess as a cage fighter didn’t exactly suggest a talent for stealth, but Cait had proved surprisingly adept at clandestine ops, learning your hand signals and eliminating targets with none of the boisterousness of the ring. </p><p>The drug addiction her handler alluded to, however, was of some concern. You weren’t entirely unaware of what it looked like. You had seen the impact of Chase R&amp;D’s products on the frontline grunts during your final deployment. Not on yourself—to your knowledge, none of the stuff was provided to SOF due to concerns about your cost and “longevity in the field”—but the infantry units were perfect lab rats. They were loaded up on so much juice it was a wonder they didn’t kill each other. For all you knew, maybe they did. After your retirement, you were unplugged from the Army newsfeed. Any reports of casualties that made it through the media funnel were completely sanitized. From what Nate told you after you woke up, even the fate of your own team was labeled an “accident” in the press. The truth was apparently considered bad for morale.</p><p>But, as you constantly needed to remind yourself, that was then. You didn’t know what kind of chems made it into the future. And whatever Cait’s poison of choice, she seemed to have it under relative control. If it became a problem, if it impacted her performance, you would reassess then.</p><p>“We’re clear down here!” she called from below, her brogue filling the half-finished atrium. </p><p>You were in another Vault. You tried not to think about it.</p><p>Your sweep of the upper level revealed no further combatants in the immediate area. “Upstairs is clear,” you said, cringing at how your voice echoed in the cavernous room. What you wouldn’t give for your old helmet, with its built-in comm device and infrared goggles. All you had was a beret you bought on a rare flight of fancy in Diamond City. It wasn’t the right shade of green, but it provided a grim sort of amusement just the same.</p><p>Cait met up with you on the second level, a walkway overlooking the partially-installed red and white checkered cafeteria floor and a few never-used picnic-style tables. Immediately, she gave the body in front of the window a solid kick—a creative way to check for life, you had to admit—and, when it was clear he was dead as a doornail, she started rifling through his pockets.</p><p>“Nice shot,” she remarked, inspecting the entrance wound in the back of the mafioso’s head before pocketing his ammo.</p><p>Another voice responded from the room ahead: “You didn’t have to paint his brains all over the window, you know. A few more minutes and I would’ve talked him into leaving.”</p><p>You lunged to the side, putting your back to the wall adjacent to the window. The glass was strong, handling your .308 round without shattering, but you weren’t sure how much more punishment it could take, particularly with the SMGs this gang was partial to. You kept your rifle aimed at the door to the room behind the window. If whoever was in there decided to come out, they would find themselves thoroughly ventilated.</p><p>“It’s Nick Valentine,” said the voice. “If you’re not friends with Skinny Malone, you might be friends with me.”</p><p>Your heart rate reduced from Gatling gun to jackhammer. You took a chance to peer through the window. Between the blood and the spiderweb cracks and the general modern Commonwealth grime, you couldn’t see anything beyond the shadowy outline of a human within the room.</p><p>“The door’s locked by a terminal,” said the one calling himself Valentine. “Ol’ Dino there might have the password on him.”</p><p>Cait held up a slip of paper between her fingers; you grabbed it—security protocols here really needed some tightening—and motioned her over to the terminal.</p><p>“I’m going to open the door,” you whispered to her. “I don’t know if that’ll trigger an alarm, so cover my back and watch the entrance.”</p><p>Cait nodded, but then asked, “Isn’t this Valentine the one we’re lookin’ for? You think he’ll shoot?”</p><p>“I don’t know. Not everyone is who they say they are.”</p><p>A spark of something flashed in Cait’s eyes. Understanding, maybe, or empathy. You didn’t want to guess the source—it wasn’t something anyone deserved to have in common with you. And you weren’t sure Cait was someone you wanted to have much in common with, anyway.</p><p>You punched Dino’s password into the terminal and brought your weapon to bear as soon as the door whooshed open to reveal a small, unremarkable office. Only one man was in the room, his hands raised in surrender. “Take it easy, hotshot,” he said, and his voice was human, but—</p><p>“Oh fuck,” Cait muttered behind you.</p><p>This was no man. Or woman, for that matter. Where skin should be, gray, resinous plastic took its place; parts of it were torn away on his face and neck, revealing not muscle and sinew, but metal and wires, hydraulics and screws, gleaming under the fluorescent lights. He (it?) wore a battered trench coat and tie—like a robotic mockery of the old detective shows your brother used to love—and the sleeves slid down what were meant to be his arms, showing a right hand stripped down to its metal bones, with phalanges like steel talons.</p><p>Was this a synth? It didn’t seem possible; Piper’s article indicated that synths could blend seamlessly with human society. This… thing could only do that among a meeting for the blind. But he was clearly more advanced than the assaultrons that fought alongside you in Anchorage—his voice was a perfect mimic of a human’s, even better than a Mister Handy’s, and the plastic forming his mouth and brow ridge moved in a shockingly realistic manner, twitching in a way your brain interpreted as annoyance.</p><p>“Didn’t your parents ever teach you that it’s rude to stare?” he said. Awfully cheeky for something with a rifle pointed at him.</p><p>“Tell me who you are,” you commanded, then lowered your gun’s muzzle to the ground. His hands lowered with it. If his story matched up, maybe you wouldn’t have to send him to the scrapheap.</p><p>“Like I said before: Nick Valentine. I’m a detective in Diamond City. Recently took on a case to track down a gal named Darla; her parents thought she was kidnapped and hired me to find her.” His mouth drew into a frown. “As it turns out, she’s just fine. In cahoots with Skinny Malone—and of her own free will, mind you. I was clubbed over the head and when I came to, I’d been locked in this room. No idea what they plan to do with me.” He shrugged. “Ransom, maybe, but who would pay for an old synth?”</p><p>Your stomach dropped. So he <em>was</em> a synth. But everything he said checked out. And why would Piper, of all people, recommend his services to you? She had to have known what he was.</p><p>“Are you with the Institute?” Such a stupid thing to ask—it revealed your hand, and it would be pathetically easy for Valentine to lie, but your head was a mess. None of this made sense.</p><p>Strangely, Valentine smirked. “You’ve been talking with Piper, haven’t you?” His eyes were incredibly unsettling: glowing yellow irises set in sclera made of the same gray material as the rest of him. They flicked between you and Cait, mechanical and yet, almost human. “No, I’m not with the Institute. I assume they made me, but I woke up in a dumpster with no memories of the place and one hell of a headache. I’m my own man, whether you want to believe that or not.”</p><p>Cait spoke up next, sounding every bit as suspicious as you felt; it was an odd comfort. “A synth in Diamond City? That’s the last place I’d expect to see one of you lot.”</p><p>“Look, I’d be more than happy to give you my life story, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather do it above ground.” Valentine fixed his uncanny gaze on you. “Now, I think it’s my turn to ask some questions. You went through a lot of trouble to find me. Why?”</p><p>“I’m looking for someone. He was taken. <em>Actually</em> taken,” you made sure to clarify, given what landed Valentine here in the first place. “I—I watched it happen.”</p><p> “Who?”</p><p>You traded glances with Cait. She had heard the whole story just the night before, the unlucky recipient of your drunken breakdown at the Third Rail bar in Goodneighbor. Too little sleep, too much alcohol, and a too-curious drinking partner had you spilling your guts—the whole sorry tale, from the bombs to the vault to Shaun’s kidnapping and Nate’s murder. To Cait’s credit, she accepted it all with surprising aplomb, laughing and ordering herself another round of shots with the claim that she wasn’t nearly drunk enough to believe a story like that. As for you, your shame at your sudden bout of vulnerability was eclipsed moments later by the sheer quantity of vomit you managed to expel in the Third Rail’s bathroom.</p><p>“My—” But now you were faced with the cold grip of sobriety, and it trapped the words in your throat. You remembered when you were finally allowed to bring him home; how small he looked, swaddled in a light blue hospital blanket; how fragile he felt when the nurse gave him to you. You made so many promises to that tiny infant in your arms.</p><p>Your eyes began to sting. God, when did you get so weak? Were you really about to cry in front of a strung-out merc and a robot? “My son,” you choked out. “They took my baby.”</p><p>You stared at the floor and cycled through the myriad ways you could kill Shaun’s kidnapper until your tears evaporated and your mind stilled. When you were ready to look back up, Valentine was watching you. His face seemed to soften, though you weren’t sure how such a thing was possible.</p><p>“Ah,” he said simply, clasping one metal and one plastic hand together. “<em>That’s</em> something I can help with. Let’s get topside, alright? Then we can talk details.” He started walking toward the door, then stopped and patted his coat from chest to waist as though he’d forgotten something. “You got a gun?” he asked. “They took mine when Darla whacked me with a bat.”</p><p>With some reluctance, Cait passed over the .44 and the ammo she swiped from Dino’s corpse. You let Valentine take point. He might be the best shot you had at finding Shaun, but you weren’t letting this synth out of your sight.</p>
<hr/><p>When Garvey asked you to be General for the Minutemen upon your return to Sanctuary Hills, you laughed. You laughed hysterically, high-pitched and breathless, like this world had finally conquered you and driven you to madness.</p><p>You weren’t entirely sure it hadn’t.</p><p>All he could do was stare at you, bemused, until you wiped the tears from your eyes and stared back. Who did he see in front of him? A knight in shining armor? A hero from a comic book? Fucking Paul Revere? His face was the picture of desperation, the kind that clouds the brain with intoxicating faux-solutions. He had a field of nails, and to him, you must have looked just like a hammer.</p><p>He didn’t see you. You, who had only led once in your life and failed miserably at it. You, whose body betrayed you on a daily basis, whose mind was only held together by thoughts of your son and the man who took him. You, who plunged a needle full of Med-X into your arm for the first time yesterday, ruining two hundred and five days of sobriety from it, ruining the most important promise you made to Shaun the day you took him home.</p><p>One week in this new, terrible hell, and now you, of all people, were meant to fix it.</p><p>“The Commonwealth needs you,” Garvey said, like that was supposed to convince you. Funny, Uncle Sam said the same damn thing.</p><p>The Commonwealth could burn. You would light the match yourself if it meant getting Shaun back. “I’m really not the right person for the job,” you replied, hoping it was a firm enough rejection to clue him in.</p><p>It was not. “I know you’re just being humble. You could’ve left us to die back in Concord, but you put yourself in harm’s way to make sure we all got out of there alive. You have what it takes.”</p><p><em>De oppresso liber</em>. Perhaps you hadn’t completely abandoned the creed. But you didn’t go to Concord expecting to run a rescue mission. As soon as you entered the town, you were under heavy fire by a group of thugs you’d later learn to call “Raiders,” and the museum merely seemed the most fortified position; you hadn’t even heard Garvey calling for help from the balcony. You didn’t save them because it was the right thing to do, because of some pre-War ethos—all the <em>duty and honor</em> in the world meant jack shit the moment those nukes were fired. No, you saved them because it facilitated your own survival.</p><p>General. That was an officer rank, not meant for an enlisted shitkicker like you. Not that Garvey would know that. The Minutemen probably assigned their titles like civvy kids—whose most formative exposure to the military was <em>Armor Ace and the Power Patrol</em>—playing “Stomp the Red” on the playground.</p><p>“Shouldn’t <em>you</em> be the general?” you countered. “These are your people. This is your organization.”</p><p>Garvey at least had the grace to look embarrassed. “They are, and it is, but…” He sighed. “I’ll be honest with you. When we were pinned down in the museum, I wasn’t sure how much longer we were going to survive. I tried to keep it together for the others’ sakes, but on the inside? I was a mess. But then you came in, and I saw how you took charge and stayed calm even when things felt hopeless. I can’t do that. I’m not… I’m not a leader.”</p><p>“Neither am I.” You couldn’t help him. You weren’t even sure you could—no. You refused to entertain that thought. “Garvey, listen to me. I’m not the one you want.”</p><p>“I understand. You’ve got a lot on your plate.” He tilted his head up, and even under the shade of his hat, you could see the enduring hope in his eyes. So damn young. So full of conviction. “But I didn’t want to be someone who’s too proud to ask for help. If you change your mind, well… you know where to find me.”</p><p>You left him at the bridge and walked into the remains of your old home, the hollowed out houses and rusted cars the only things to greet you. You were no leader. Not anymore.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Metaphase</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter contains graphic depictions of violence.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>It shouldn’t be able to move that fast.</em>
</p><p>You kept thinking that, and they kept proving you wrong.</p><p>They came at you like ocean waves: deceptively manageable from afar, shambling past the police station’s outer barricades as if by accident. But then they sensed you—by smell, by sight, by some other means you couldn’t fathom—and they crashed in all at once, gnarled limbs and fetid breath washing over you. Their bodies defied the sort of physics that shackle the living, accelerating from shuffle to sprint with zero transition.</p><p>And they were relentless. Three more entered your sights at two o’clock position. You called it out, though you weren’t sure any of the other humans you found yourself with could hear you over the din of combat. Their laserfire filled the air, pummeling the zombies (did the woman to your left call them “ferals?”), leaving gaping, bloodless wounds that stank of smoke and sour meat.</p><p>With your comrades occupied by the flood of enemies at their flank, you were on your own to deal with this trio. You leveled your rifle at one of the creatures and fired. It was a perfect shot, tearing off half the thing’s face, but the injury barely slowed it. Its long, pointed tongue lolled out of what remained of its jaw as it spun around wildly trying to find you. You refused to give it the chance, sending two more rounds through its torso. It collapsed, twitching feebly on the ground, but its two partners now had your scent. Their heads snapped up, their glowing eyes fixed on you.</p><p>They were on you before you could fire your next round. You stumbled backward, wedging yourself between the police station wall and a metal barricade. The creatures clawed at you, breaking off rotten fingertips against your scavenged combat armor. One caught you on the cheek and nearly took your eye out. You slammed the butt of your rifle into its head in retribution, and its skull collapsed like an overripe melon.</p><p>The remaining feral lunged, mouth wide and hungry, a rasping gurgle bubbling up from the ruins of its throat. You answered with a growl of your own and emptied the rest of your magazine into its chest before it could sink its teeth into you.</p><p>You yanked a clip from your belt to reload. In the time it took you to ram it into your gun, a dozen more of the fuckers barreled through the gates. This time, they seemed to move with a purpose, as though they shared a single mind. They were heading for the man standing alone at the top of the gantry.</p><p>“Keane!” yelled one of the men from the ground. His power armor was covered in desiccated bits of flesh. “Fall back!”</p><p>The one named Keane was good as dead. With monsters at both sides and more swarming below the gantry, retreat was impossible. He screamed, shrill with rage and fear, as feral as the creatures hoping to devour him. Endless blasts issued from his rifle into the creatures at his left while his team on the ground took aim at the ones to his right. You tried to join them, but when you squeezed the trigger, your gun jammed.</p><p>Swearing, you dropped it and drew your sidearm. It didn’t matter. They were all over Keane now, burying him beneath a writhing pile of shriveled, irradiated bodies.</p><p>“Man down! Man down!” called the woman, and—</p><p>You were in Alaska, and your assistant commander and team sergeant were dead in the snow, covered in AER12 scorch marks. You clutched at your radio with numb fingers, trying to hail the other half of your team. There was no answer. The Chinese were coming.</p><p>“Team One, this is 18-Bravo,” you gasped, panic gripping your throat. Someone had to hear you. God, please let them hear you. “I’ve got two men down. Enemy inbound. Team One, do you read me? I repeat, <em>man down</em>—”</p><p>The feral dropped to the ground in front of you with a magazine’s worth of 9mm bullets lodged in its body. Your pistol shook in your hands.</p><p>“We’re clear! Cease fire!” barked the one in power armor. “Haylen, see to Knight Keane.”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” she said, and made for the gantry with the grim expression of a medic who knew exactly what she was going to find.</p><p>The apparent man in charge crossed the station yard to where you stood. His armor, you noticed, was a newer model—a T-51, maybe even a T-60. Much nicer than the shitty T-45 you tried to never wear in Anchorage. Beneath the zombie grime, it looked to be in exquisite condition, as did his modified AER9. The chestplate of his armor had an insignia you didn’t recognize; it certainly wasn’t the Stars and Stripes, but it had to indicate some kind of organization. These weren’t run-of-the-mill Raiders. Maybe the Gunners MacCready told you about? You kept your hand resting on the grip of your sidearm after you holstered it.</p><p>You expected a “thank you,” or an inquiry into the extent of your injuries, or perhaps even a proper introduction. What you got instead was: “A word of advice, civilian. When operating in small teams, it’s appropriate to take up a wedge formation with the most well-armored individual at the front.”</p><p>You would’ve laughed if you weren’t busy pushing away old memories and picking chunks of fingernail out of your cheek. “Not when you’re backed up against a wall with the enemy at all sides,” you countered, like you were back in Q-Course studying endless charts of X’s and O’s. “Unless you want your most well-armored individual shipped off to the morgue. An inverted-U formation provides the widest range of fire and protects <em>all</em> members of your team.”</p><p>“With all due respect, <em>civilian</em>, my training included numerous courses on battle tactics, taught by the most experienced members of our order. You would do well to heed their words.”</p><p>He was entirely too well-armed and armored for you to say what came to mind just then. You <em>were</em> technically a civilian after your retirement, but the way he spat the word like a curse, like this <em>civilian</em> didn’t just save his ass…</p><p>Haylen returned then, leaving you to bristle in silence. She said nothing besides a solemn, “Sir,” and pressed a set of holotags into her leader’s outstretched hand.</p><p>He closed his eyes and gave an abbreviated sigh. “Once I’ve re-secured the perimeter, I’ll make sure he receives a proper burial.”</p><p>Another man limped over. He appeared to have taken a number of hits from the enemy—unfortunately for him, he didn’t have the benefit of power armor, only a lightly armored jumpsuit. A trickle of blood ran down the side of his closely shaved head. “I’m going with you, sir,” he claimed, though he looked like he wasn’t fit to make it to the other end of the yard, much less somewhere with soil.</p><p>“Knight Rhys,” the taller man said, in a tone somewhere between impatience and exasperation. “You need medical treatment before participating in any excursions.”</p><p>“I’ve got it, sir,” said Haylen, halting Rhys’s protests with a wave of her hand. She frowned suddenly. “But what about the transmitter?”</p><p>“I will set out to retrieve it after seeing to Knight Keane. With his loss, our need for reinforcements has become even more dire.”</p><p>“You can’t possibly—” Haylen sputtered, then seemed to think better of it. She pulled her cap off and ran a hand through her ginger hair before continuing, in a calmer voice, “On your own, sir? Are you sure?”</p><p>“I don’t see any other option.”</p><p>You stood off to the side and watched this conversation play out, feeling every bit the stranger you were. You wished Cait was with you—she at least had a sense of humor. You weren’t even supposed to be here. When you were beset by ferals in Cambridge on the way to Diamond City, you tried to duck behind the shelter of the police barricades only to find yourself pulled into a bigger fight alongside… whoever these people were. Captain Know-It-All and his Private Stooges. Or was it Knight Stooges? You had no idea what that rank was supposed to mean. At least the medic seemed competent.</p><p>But then she looked at you and said, “What about her? She held her own in that fight.”</p><p>Their leader, who still couldn’t be bothered to tell you his goddamn name, eyed you suspiciously, like he hadn’t just watched you take down more ferals than his three subordinates combined. “Normally, I would prefer being accompanied by a soldier within our order,” he said. “But given our situation, perhaps I must risk seeking outside support.”</p><p><em>A soldier within our order</em>. Who did these fools think they were? They were looking at the last soldier on earth, and they didn’t even know it.</p><p>You considered leaving them to handle their own problems. But shit, you needed the money. The only reason you were going to Diamond City was to visit Doctor Sun to top off your supply of Med-X, and the caps you had stashed away in your pockets wouldn’t get you more than half a vial from that extortionist. From the way your back was already starting to twinge, less than a day from your last dose, half a vial wouldn’t be enough to justify the trip.</p><p>“I don’t help for free,” you said—ignoring the fact that you just did and hoping he would do the same. “And I don’t help people who can’t even tell me their name.”</p><p>His perpetual frown managed to grow even more severe. “Paladin Danse,” he said. “Brotherhood of Steel.” If he could’ve puffed out his chest in that power armor, he surely would have.</p><p>Knight. Paladin. <em>Brotherhood-of-fucking-Steel</em>. To think you once believed the Navy had the dumbest naming conventions. “Maria Gutierrez,” you replied, then paused. United States Army Special Forces? No, that wouldn’t work. You settled on: “Independent mercenary.”</p><p>“I see.” His dark, prominent eyebrows were in danger of swallowing his eyeballs entirely with how deeply they were furrowed. He seemed to find the word <em>mercenary</em> even more distasteful than <em>civilian</em>. “Though I find that… <em>profession</em> utterly bereft of honor, it appears I have no choice. I will ensure that you’re compensated for your services.”</p><p>“Great.”</p><p>“Great,” he echoed flatly; you couldn’t tell if he was mocking you. You assumed he was. He glanced at the jammed gun at your feet. “If you require help repairing your weapons, Knight Rhys can assist.”</p><p>You had been trained to disassemble, repair, reassemble, and fire close to a hundred different weapons systems—domestic and foreign, conventional and laser. You couldn’t set a bone or disarm a bomb or set up a comm-link, but you could sure as shit repair a fucking gun. “That won’t be necessary,” you forced through gritted teeth.</p><p>Rhys looked as if he’d rather get down on his belly and fellate one of the shamblers than assist you with anything. The feeling was entirely mutual.</p><p>“Understood. We leave in one hour,” Danse told you. “Be ready.”</p>
<hr/><p>You helped bury Keane. There were three graves beside his, and recent ones at that. You didn’t ask.</p><p>Danse said a few words, but you didn’t hear them, lost in memories of your own fallen. You weren’t able to attend any of their funerals. By the time they found all the bodies, you were in Boston learning how to walk again, unable to fly to any of their respective hometowns. You would carry that regret to your own grave.</p><p>They finished the ceremony with a salute. Not the four-fingers salute you were familiar with—the three of them pressed a fist to their chest and said something in Latin. God, things had changed in the last two hundred years.</p><p>Rhys and Haylen returned to the station with Keane’s personal effects, and you and Danse headed for ArcJet Systems, a name you were only vaguely familiar with from before the vault. Danse had tersely briefed you on the mission, as though he was wary you’d screw his team over if you had anything more than the barest of details. Retrieve a deep range transmitter, bring it back to the police station, get paid. Roger that.</p><p>You just hoped you wouldn’t kill each other before the caps hit your pocket. Danse acted like a jumped-up meathead, like a corporal the day after promotion. It reminded you of your six years in Big Army’s 108th before you moved to SF and were finally treated with an ounce of respect. He was clearly used to issuing orders and having them followed without question. He was clearly <em>not</em> used to relating to people like a normal human being. The more time you spent in proximity to him, the more you wanted to rip his helmet off and throttle him.</p><p>“You should acquire your own suit of power armor,” he informed you not far from the burial site. “It augments every facet of one’s combat skills.”</p><p>“Tried it. Hated it. Never wearing it again if I can help it,” you replied, rolling your eyes at the seven foot-tall target stomping along in front of you. As one of the team’s heavies, you had occasionally needed to strap into your T-45 to haul miniguns and RPGs for direct-assault missions, but you never enjoyed it. Power armor was too slow, too loud, too attractive to small-dicked boys hoping to compensate. Stealth was your preference—the protection offered by power armor meant nothing if you could kill your enemies before they ever knew you were there.</p><p>“You may change your mind when you’ve experienced battle as I have, civilian.”</p><p>Your hands ached from how tightly they were wrapped around your gun. “What makes you think I haven’t experienced battle?” you asked, quiet as a knife between the ribs. A smarter man would’ve known to shut his mouth.</p><p>Danse was not a smarter man. “You are not a member of the Brotherhood of Steel,” he said simply, like it was blindingly obvious. Like you were stupid for asking.</p><p>You should have left then, continued on to Diamond City for your half-vial of Med-X like you originally planned. Maybe things would have worked out better for both of you if you had.</p><p>Instead you marched north—the opposite direction of Diamond City—your greed barely outweighing your irritation. You encountered a few enemies along the way: bloatflies, a pack of mongrel dogs, even a few Raiders. Danse tried his hardest to control your every move; you ignored his commands and thought for yourself, falling back on your own training the way you had done since you left the vault. You never endangered him—despite your animosity, he was still your ally, at least for the moment—but you refused to be ordered around. That life was long behind you.</p><p>Several miles later, ArcJet systems came into view. It was a mundane gray building choked with vines, the bright yellow trim around the roof the only thing distinguishing it from any other factory in the area. And it was here, in the crescent shadow of ArcJet’s logo, that Danse finally pushed you over the edge.</p><p>In his power armor, he loomed nearly two feet over you. Unwilling to be cowed, you craned your neck to stare right into the sight ports of his helmet. You didn’t need to see his expression; even through the damping effect of his respirator, his disgust for you was evident in his voice.</p><p>“We’ve arrived at our target,” he said. “Since you’ve demonstrated to me that you have no discipline, training, or respect for my commands, I will keep this brief. We will infiltrate the facility and retrieve the deep range transmitter. Recon indicates it is located in a control room on the top floor of the building. If you continue to insist on insubordination, I request that you at least stay out of my way on this mission. I won’t have you be a liability.”</p><p>Perhaps it was his continued assumptions about your lack of experience. Perhaps it was your back spasming mercilessly regardless of how carefully you stood. Or perhaps it was merely the pain of a wounded ego. Whatever the reason, you snapped.</p><p>“Listen, asshole,” you snarled. “I served in the military. United States Army, Echo Company, Sixth Battalion, 24th Special Forces Group, Operational Detachment Alpha 248.” He couldn’t possibly understand what those words meant to you. No one could anymore. You didn’t care. “I do <em>not</em> take orders from you. You are <em>not</em> my commanding officer. <em>That</em> was Captain Alice Spencer.” Your voice began to shake; you couldn’t hope to stop it. You never even saw her body, but that didn’t prevent your imagination from recreating the scene constantly since the moment your radio went silent. “She died in combat while trying to protect our team. You and your pretend soldiers wouldn’t be fit to clean her fucking boots.”</p><p>Danse did not respond for a long time. You weren’t sure what he <em>could</em> say to that. He had no reason to believe you—you spoke of service to a country that breathed its death rattle over two hundred years ago.</p><p>Eventually, he spoke. “I am sorry for your loss,” he said, stiff as a board. And then, “If you truly have military experience, you understand the difficult situation my team is under. Retrieving this transmitter is our only chance to contact reinforcements. I do not wish to think of what will become of us if we fail.”</p><p>That was, apparently, the best you were going to get. “Then let’s get a move on,” you said. You weren’t getting paid if his team kicked the bucket.</p>
<hr/><p>Synths. You really shouldn’t have been surprised. The models that assaulted you inside ArcJet were obviously the Institute’s cannon fodder; they were even more rudimentary than Valentine—their voices were completely robotic, the few sentences you heard composed of the limited syntax of basic AIs. They moved with deliberate, heavy steps, betraying their natures with every jerk of their limbs. And when you shot them, your bullets revealed tangled snakes of circuits beneath their gray polymer skin.</p><p>You and Danse hardly spoke to each other. After your explosion outside, any conversation would likely end poorly; better to avoid it and preserve what little combat synergy you could build as you infiltrated deeper into the building. He would draw the fire, you would dart around behind him and take out enemies along the perimeter. Occasionally, he even deigned to hold position while you moved ahead to snipe from the high ground. It was nowhere near the practically-telepathic symbiosis you’d had with your old team, or even the slapdash sort of teamwork you had formed with Cait, but it did the job.</p><p>To his credit, he was remarkably composed when you killed a roomful of synths by launching a rocket directly above him. You were just grateful he didn’t use the opportunity to lecture you again on the benefits of power armor.</p><p>Thirty minutes after you walked in, with the foul smell of burning plastic in your nostrils and a troop of mechanized corpses at your feet, you plucked the deep range transmitter from a desk and tucked it into your pack.</p><p>You exited ArcJet afterward, your steps light, buoyed with the pride of mission accomplished. Danse was beside you, tugging his helmet off. His face was a river of sweat, his recon hood dark with it—you could only imagine what the inside of his armor smelled like. If he was at all pleased with what the two of you had accomplished, you couldn’t tell.</p><p>“So,” he said after the building had faded into the distance behind you, “what did you do in the military?” It was the first sentence longer than a word he had uttered since you entered ArcJet.</p><p>You decided to humor him. “Infantry, then weapons sergeant when I moved into SF. I shot a lot of guns, basically.”</p><p>“Big guns?”</p><p>“Big guns, small guns. If it existed, I shot it. Got to ride in the tanks and fire the 140 millimeter cannons a few times. That was fun.”</p><p>Danse grunted in what might have been approval. You didn’t speak again until you returned to the Cambridge police station.</p><p>And then he gave you his rifle and asked you to join the Brotherhood of Steel.</p><p>“Perhaps I’m making a mistake by extending this offer to you. But,” he said, and his admission only sounded slightly pained, “you have proved yourself a soldier on this mission. A soldier whose obedience may leave something to be desired,”—why was his cheek twitching? Either he was trying not to smile or he was having a stroke—“but if what you’ve told me is true, you possessed that capability at some point in your life. If you chose to relearn it, if you chose to return to a life of honor… the Brotherhood would welcome you.”</p><p>You rubbed your face and grimaced; that blow from the feral would leave an ugly bruise. What “life of honor” did he think you led? And why would you ever want to return to it?</p><p>“Who would be my CO?” you asked, dreading the answer. “You?”</p><p>Danse seemed to dread answering just as much. “You would be my responsibility, yes.”</p><p>“Then you’re gonna need to sell me on this a little harder, Danse.”</p><p>“Fine. What you see here,” he said and waved a gauntleted hand around him at the pitiful police station, “is nothing compared to the real power of the Brotherhood. We are collectors and guardians of the greatest weapons and technology humanity has ever known.” He must have seen your ears perk up at the word <em>weapons</em>, because he added, “You would have full access to our arsenal. And your own suit of T-60 power armor, should you decide to take my advice on using it. And, most importantly, you would be—”</p><p>“‘Part of something bigger than yourself,’” you finished. “Yeah yeah, I’ve heard all this before.”</p><p>“Then I’ll let you make your decision. What'll it be, soldier?”</p><p>You looked at the AER9 in your hands. Hell of a lot better than what you had been using. And an arsenal? Assuming he wasn’t lying—something told you Danse was physically incapable of such a thing—and the Brotherhood proper truly <em>was</em> rolling in goodies…</p><p>Valentine had narrowed the identity of Shaun’s kidnapper down to a man known as “Kellogg,” but given how hard he was proving to find, there was no way he was working alone. If your suspicions were correct and the Institute was involved, the handful of mercenaries and hangers-on you had accumulated wouldn’t be enough. You needed resources. You needed power. And here it was being offered up on a silver platter. Ripe for the taking.</p><p>But what would you be giving in return?</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Anaphase</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter contains graphic depictions of violence.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Your brother enlisted in the Army at eighteen, just like your father, your grandfather, and your great-grandfather before him. This was hardly unexpected—for as long as you could remember, Anthony loved the military in a way that often bordered on worship. His bedroom was filled with posters of soldiers, weapons, and hard-nosed motivational quotes. Service members of every branch learned to hide from him lest he inevitably hold them captive with a battery of questions about their profession. He was first in line at any recruitment table—not because he needed any convincing; he just wanted to reaffirm his commitment to someone who would support it unquestionably.</p><p>Though your father took great pains to treat his children equally, you were never meant to join the forces. As the firstborn son of a respected NCO, that was Anthony’s duty, and one he gladly shouldered.</p><p>He was the last person you expected to desert.</p><p>You didn’t even know about it until he was arrested. It was 2062, four years after his enlistment, at the start of his third deployment—this time to Alaska, a place you would soon grow to despise for your own reasons. He left the base in Anchorage, hitchhiked through Canada, and ended up in the Northwest Commonwealth. Five months later, the police put him in cuffs after they pulled his car over for a blown tail light. They turned him over to the military, and that was when your father called your mother. From across the room, you watched her press her forehead to the wall, tears rolling down her cheeks to wet the handset clutched to her ear. You thought he had died. The truth was worse.</p><p>When the media sank their claws into the story, his name became synonymous with “traitor.” In the United States, patriotism and paranoia were often found in the same pot; though they had maintained a steady simmer since the invasion of Mexico over a decade prior, the discovery of communist operatives in Niagara earlier that year had swiftly brought things to a boil. Private First Class Anthony Gutierrez became a scapegoat for the military’s failures in not only the eyes of civilians, but the top brass as well. His desertion was considered a slap in the face to the nation itself.</p><p>Despite the spectacle, his crime was not especially unique. Soldiers were known to desert occasionally, even in hostile foreign land; sometimes it took years before the military caught them, and often the punishment was a slap on the wrist. It was your father that made the spotlight shine on Anthony’s case. Staff Sgt. David Gutierrez had recently been promoted to First Sergeant and was now the senior enlisted advisor of a battery in the 27th Field Artillery Regiment. It was an immense honor for a man who had dedicated his life to the armed forces—an honor your brother’s treason spat on.</p><p>Anthony was court-martialed. Though America would not officially declare war on China for another four years, the two nations were now considered to be “in conflict,” which was much the same thing as far as the military was concerned. Given that—and the perceived nepotism—the court was determined to make an example of Anthony. They pushed for the harshest possible sentence.</p><p>He accepted it without a word in his own defense. You would always remember how awful it felt—the proud, spirited boy you grew up with becoming someone you did not recognize: a pathetic, cowardly man, staring at his shoes or somewhere off in the distance, his head bowed in shame. When the judge asked him why he chose to abandon his post, all he answered was, “I don’t know, Your Honor.”</p><p>It was the first time in your life you were truly angry. You sat in the back next to your mother and trembled with rage as you watched your brother answer every question with the same damn answer. He didn’t know. He didn’t know. You wanted to sprint up to the front and pummel him, force him to admit the truth. Because he had to know, didn’t he? He had to have some reason for ruining your family’s name. Did the Army ask him to do something immoral? Did he feel like he had no other choice but to run? Had he turned pacifist? Many years later, you would learn the truth. But in that moment, it was only: “I don’t know, Your Honor.”</p><p>In that moment, you hated him.</p><p>His mistakes would shift your life entirely. You were sixteen, aimlessly moving through high school with no goals to speak of. After the judge’s gavel dropped and Anthony was sentenced to a dishonorable discharge and three years in military prison, even through the murk of anger and despair, your mind was painfully clear. You would enlist. You would fix what your brother had broken.</p><p>The intensity of your fury that morning in the courtroom worried you. You had always been an even-keeled child, brief moments of teenage angst notwithstanding. But the anger had swallowed your mind, obliterating every good memory you had of Anthony, tightening your fists until your fingernails jabbed into your palms, until your molars ached from clenching your jaw. It turned you into a different person—and she terrified you. You made a decision: as Anthony was locked away, so was she. You vowed to never let her out again.</p><p>You were able to keep her hidden for years—through the rest of high school, through enlistment, even through your first three deployments to Alaska. In training, in combat, and at home. You couldn’t figure out how to suppress your anger without suppressing everything else, too, but it had to be worth it. Trading a little joy for the sake of control was a sacrifice you were more than willing to make.</p><p>And then you met Sergeant First Class Rick Baker.</p><p>SFC Baker was a Q-Course instructor for Special Forces, and built like a brick—stout, bald, square-jawed. Immovable. He took a special delight in teaching hand-to-hand combat, and an even greater delight in pushing his students beyond their presumed limits. Most of the class—particularly those who enlisted directly into SF—despised him. You were indifferent, but then again, you were indifferent to most things back then.</p><p>One morning, fifteen minutes past the 0500 reveille, you and the eleven other soldiers in your training ODA lined up at attention in one of Camp Sampson’s ancient gym halls. Weathered blue floor mats covered the ground from wall to wall, and the whole place stank of rubber and dried sweat. Baker paced back and forth in front of the line. He seemed unusually chipper despite the early hour, which guaranteed an imminent ass-kicking.</p><p>“Gutierrez!” he said cordially, stopping in front of you. “You’ve seen some action, haven’t you? Used that gun for more than just decoration?”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” you replied. The R91 in your hands was blank-adapted for the extent of Q-Course, but you had fired the real deal at enemy combatants more times than you cared to remember.</p><p>“Tell me then: what is the most important emotion in combat?”</p><p>A trick question. You had to stifle a smile before answering, “The absence of emotion, sir.”</p><p>“Wrong!” Baker yelled, loud enough to make a few of the greenhorns jump. “<em>Anger</em> is the most important emotion in combat! Anger will keep you alive when you’re inserted deep into enemy territory and under fire with the closest ‘bird eight hours away! When it’s life and death out in the field, <em>anger</em> will allow you to kill that motherfucker before he kills you!” He stared down at you and smirked. “Because you answered incorrectly, Gutierrez, you’ll receive hands-on training. Lucky you! Stow your weapon and get on the mat.”</p><p>You did so, dreading what was to come. Unarmed combat was proving your least favorite session thus far. Though your reflexes were theoretically fast enough, even when you sparred with the other female recruits you hardly ever generated enough force to punish your adversaries before they took you down. You stood no chance against Baker, and he knew it.</p><p>He was positively giddy. “Now, I’m going to attack Gutierrez,” he said to the rest of the students, who looked far too eager to watch you get your ass beat, “and I want her to get pissed. I’m a fair bit bigger than her, but if she brings out that aggression, uses it to fuel her technique, even a little girl like her can overpower me.”</p><p>That “little girl” comment was meant to rile you, but you remained calm. He would not get the better of you. It wasn’t exactly an inaccurate observation, after all; you were a whole five-foot-three on a good day.</p><p>You circled each other. While you were tense as a coiled spring, Baker’s stance was relaxed—nearly flat-footed, his hands kept by his waist, like he doubted you could even reach him. Any other soldier would’ve been insulted by his passivity.</p><p>“You don’t belong here, Gutierrez,” he said, loud enough for the others to hear. “You should quit and crawl back to mediocrity in the 108th.” He made a lazy grab for you; you easily batted his hands away but didn’t engage further. “What, you think I’m gonna take it easy on you just because of your daddy?” The following strike came faster, and you just barely dodged it. “You think because you came from some top kick’s nutsack, you’re something special?”</p><p>You stepped into his guard and went for a leg sweep. That was a mistake. In a heartbeat, he wrenched one arm, then the other, behind your back, holding you fast, and—to pour salt in the wound—he spun you around, letting eleven deliberately impassive soldiers witness your humiliation. You struggled, but Baker’s grip was vice-like. You were trapped.</p><p>His next words were a quiet growl inches from your ear: “You want to know what I really think? I think you’re a fucking coward, just like your piece of shit brother—”</p><p>The last syllable exploded out of him in a pained gasp, lost under your shout. He stared up at you from the ground, dazed, the victim of your—apparent—hip throw. The room was silent, except for your panting and the smallest of echoes inside your skull: the slowly dawning horror that you had just screamed “fuck you” at an SFC.</p><p>From where he lay on the mat, Baker laughed—a halting, surprised chuckle. It wasn’t necessarily a good sign. He was a notoriously hard man to read; a laugh from Baker could spell doom for an unsuspecting soldier. You helped him to his feet and braced for the new asshole he was about to tear you, but he just clapped you on the back, all smiles.</p><p>“That’s how it’s done!” he roared. “When the enemy’s got you pinned down, you let that hate flow and you yell, ‘Fuck you, you son of a bitch!’” His grin disappeared as he turned away from the students to face you. “Report here tomorrow, Gutierrez. We will keep doing this until I no longer need to force emotion out of you. Understood?”</p><p>“Yes, sir.”</p><p>More than a decade after her incarceration, you learned when and how to let that girl from the courtroom out. For your first handful of sessions with Baker, you needed a target, a symbol to focus on before you could flip the switch. Baker was convenient enough—all you had to do was think of his smug face, his whisper in your ear of things he was never meant to know, and the floodgates opened, filling your body with heat, sharpening your thoughts and movements. Within weeks, you no longer needed Baker, calling on the ghost of the emotion instead. It became self-perpetuating, conditioned, like Pavlov’s dogs at the sound of the bell.</p><p>Anger was your ignition spark. When it was flowing through you, you hit harder, shrugged off injuries, shot more accurately. It made no sense; emotions were supposed to be the crutch of the weak-minded, and anger was supposed to be the worst of them all. Anger was the tool of the abuser, the bigot, the fool. But, as you came to learn, it could be so much more than that.</p><p>When you were alone in the Alaskan tundra, hundreds of miles from civilization, it wasn’t fear or hope that kept you alive. Anger saved you when no god was listening.</p><p>And it was the only thing you felt when you finally looked upon Kellogg’s face again in Fort Hagen’s command room.</p><p>You thought your horrid time in Vault 95’s detox room—after Cait crawled out of the chair and insisted you were next—would lessen your hatred; it had settled everything else in your mind, freeing you from the muddy haze of cravings and withdrawal. But if anything, without Med-X to deaden it, your fury was even more potent. You couldn’t look at him now without picturing the aftermath you had planned—hell, fantasized about—for the last three months: his fingers, currently gripping his revolver, mangled one by one; his sneer, a bloodied grimace under your boot; his self-assured, mocking voice, a fear-choked whimper. Wrath coiled around you, embraced you like a lover. Of all the people you had killed, this man, you were sure, would be the only one you’d enjoy.</p><p>Later, walking the contours of his mind in the Memory Den’s basement, you’d learn exactly who Conrad Kellogg was and what he had lost. But even with that knowledge, that picture of an innocent boy derailed from the start, you still wouldn’t change a damn thing about what happened in this room. Maybe you and he weren’t so different, in the end.</p><p>He appeared perfectly mortal. Human. But could you really be certain? If anyone were a synth—a proper, human-replicate synth, the kind described by <em>Publick Occurrences</em>—why not the creature who murdered your best friend, who stole your child? Who better to carry out such heinous orders than a programmable android? One assumed a being made of flesh and blood would possess some semblance of humanity.</p><p>But you knew better. You intimately understood the depths of human depravity well before the time of synths.</p><p>If he <em>was</em> a synth, though… that made your mission harder. Your information extraction techniques—sensory and sleep deprivation, psychological torment, and good old fashioned pain—were meant for humans. Could synths even feel pain? The older models, the ones you and Cait had left as piles of scrap throughout Fort Hagen, the ones flanking Kellogg now, didn’t seem to have that functionality. Or indeed, any form of self-preservation at all. They threw themselves at you like mechanized feral ghouls, dragging their bodies by the arms when their legs were blown off, unable to deviate from their primary directive.</p><p>This was why, when Kellogg lowered the gun he used to kill Nate and offered you the chance to talk, your first words were not a scathing curse or a demand for Shaun.</p><p>“Are you a synth?”</p><p>The left corner of Kellogg’s mouth twitched up, briefly distorting the pinkish scar bisecting his cheek and eye. “Not quite,” he said. “Got a few extra bits and pieces, maybe, but I was born before synths were even a twinkle in the Institute’s eye.”</p><p>Good. Unless “a few extra bits and pieces” included a cyanide pill tooth, you could handle it. Your breaths came fast and shallow; your pulse hammered in your throat. God, you were so damn close to the end of this nightmare. You could almost feel Shaun in your arms.</p><p>Cait stood silently behind you, keeping half an eye on the synth guard you knew was now blocking your exit. She had insisted on accompanying you while your dog tracked Kellogg over what felt like the entire Commonwealth. Though she groused endlessly about the distance, the dog, and Kellogg, there were moments in between when you caught her watching you with concern from the other side of the road. And once, when you were ready to give up and limp back to Diamond City in defeat, she brushed her fingertips across your wrist and said, “We’ll find him.” And you pushed forward.</p><p>There was, you realized somewhere far south of Fort Hagen, ankle-deep in a swamp, no one else you trusted to have your back. When you killed Kellogg, when you found Shaun… you wanted her beside you.</p><p>It was time to ensure those plans converged with the present reality. “You have two options,” you told Kellogg. The red dot of your rifle’s laser sight juddered around his chest. “Either you tell me where Shaun is, or I make you tell me. I won’t leave, and you won’t have the pleasure of dying, until I know. Choose wisely.” You weren’t entirely sure which one you wanted him to pick.</p><p>Kellogg chuckled, unconcerned. “Vicious, aren’t you? I can appreciate that. It’s what a mother should be,” he said, admiration briefly edging out derision. He leaned back against the single working console behind him, his jacket glowing under its blinking lights. “Well, you can put the thumbscrews away, alright? Your kid is safe”—your heart rose—“but he ain’t here”—and plummeted.</p><p>The words hissed from your mouth, hot as steam. “Where—the <em>fuck</em>—is my son?”</p><p>“At the Institute. And if you think you can torture its location out of me, you’re out of luck, because I don’t know. <em>They</em> find <em>you</em>. Not the other way around. And given the trail of bodies you’ve left along the way to get to me… I doubt the Institute’s in any hurry to invite you over for drinks.” </p><p>“He’s full of shite,” Cait spat. “Sounds like he needs a little somethin’ to jog his memory.”</p><p>“You really don’t get it, do you?” He enunciated slowly and loudly, like you were addled in the head. “<em>I don’t know</em>. You’re not gonna find him, not unless the Institute allows it.” His expression sobered for a fraction of a second before hardening again. “Sometimes we lose the people we love. You’d better start accepting it.”</p><p>A thin wire within your chest, wound increasingly tighter every day since the bombs, finally snapped. “Then you’re no use to me,” you snarled, and pulled the trigger.</p><p>The beam melted a hole into the metal console where Kellogg was just standing. He was too fast—<em>bits and pieces</em>, you thought, before twin explosions rocked your eardrums: Cait’s shotgun, its blast sending the synth at the door flying, and Kellogg’s revolver, cracking like thunder.</p><p>You dove behind a bank of computers. Cait was soon crouched down next to you, her back to yours, her weapon rock-steady in her hands. Vault 95 had changed everything, even the way she acted in combat: her recklessness had been replaced with caution and diligence, her impatience with discipline. She no longer fought like someone praying for death.</p><p>The two of you worked in unspoken, automatic tandem. Kellogg’s synths, mindless creatures that they were, fell easily enough. They hardly bothered maintaining tactical positions; they marched straight into your cover, straight into buckshot or laserfire. You cracked them open, their circuit guts spilling from their torsos as they tumbled to the ground.</p><p>Kellogg himself was proving much harder to take down. His six-shooter was an old weapon, but a powerful one—when a round caught you in the shoulder, the feeling of the bullet lodging into your armor was like getting smashed with a hammer. Even with needing to reload three times as often as you did, Kellogg matched your pace, moving faster than any human had a right to. You needed to get that revolver out of his hands. </p><p>You slung your rifle over your shoulder. “Get to the left and give me some covering fire with your sidearm,” you ordered Cait. “One magazine’s worth. I’ll flank him on the right and disarm him. Watch the door.”</p><p>“On it,” she replied, ducking behind an adjacent desk. You unclipped a smoke grenade from your belt and pulled the pin. After letting it cook for a two-count, you lobbed the canister toward the back of the room, slightly right of where you thought Kellogg might be. The air filled with white-gray clouds and the sounds of gunfire. You crept along the far wall of the command room, closing in on his position. He had chosen an array of terminals to hide behind, but—with the help of Cait’s fire and the smoke grenade—you could predict exactly where he would try to go.</p><p>You counted Cait’s shots while you moved—her handgun had a different tone than Kellogg’s: tinnier, more <em>pop</em> than <em>crack</em>. When the twelfth <em>pop</em> pinged off the back wall, you held your breath and lunged around the corner of the terminals, barreling through the smoke.</p><p>Kellogg let out a surprised grunt as you crashed into his back, but he recovered—again, far too quickly for a man who looked to be in his fifties—and the fight became an ugly, deadly tussle. Baker’s words swam through your head, through the adrenaline and the chaos and the suffocating blur of allium-scented smoke: <em>anger will keep you alive</em>. It was not a difficult fire to stoke. Your hatred for Baker, Anthony, even the Reds paled in comparison to the inferno of rage Kellogg had lit in you, its birth stronger than even the frozen hell of your cryopod in Vault 111.</p><p><em>He killed Nate; he took Shaun</em>—that thought was your mantra, the words running together into unintelligible emotion, a stream of gasoline for the blaze in your heart. Sounds burst from your throat: horrible things, inhuman things. One hand clamped onto his right wrist, keeping the revolver’s muzzle pointed away, the other scrabbled for purchase on whatever you could grab, whatever would keep that gun from going off in your direction. You took an elbow to the ribs, gasped for air, paid it back with a knee to the groin. A few of Kellogg’s fingers, wet with sweat, slipped off the revolver’s grip and into the waiting cage of your left hand. You bent his pinky backward until nail met wrist. He yelped and the gun skittered across the floor.</p><p><em>He killed Nate; he took Shaun</em>. Kellogg leaped to grab it and you leaped with him, tugging the knife from your belt and thrusting it through his jacket, through his shirt, into his flank. You pulled it loose and slammed it home again, then again, and again, screaming, howling. He fell to his knees, his weapon just out of reach. You could not stop. Driving your palm under his chin, you yanked his head up and back and arced your knife across his throat, across the jugular, sending gouts of hot blood across your hands to spill on the ground. The job finished, you planted your boot into his back. He landed face-down beneath the fog, in a sea of red, and didn’t move.</p><p>“Fuck you,” you sobbed. Your legs buckled and you tilted hard into a desk. The back of a dust-coated chair jabbed into your hip, keeping you from collapsing completely.</p><p>All that effort, all the work you and Valentine had put in. All of it for nothing. Shaun wasn’t here. Worse, you now knew exactly where he was, but had no way to reach him. The Institute kept your child danging just out of reach, every single goddamn step of the way. It was the ultimate cruelty.</p><p>The fury leeched out of you to join Kellogg’s blood pooling on the floor. With nothing to take its place, you felt every wound keenly: your shoulder, your ribs, the burns where the synths’ lasers had grazed you during your breakneck sprint through the fort, and that old familiar pain of two rods and four screws in your lower back. Looking at the body in front of you sent a caustic wave of revulsion up your throat, and you feared you might vomit. You swallowed it down and turned away. Nothing to show for the blood on your hands. Not one fucking thing.</p><p>You stared at the wall while Cait searched Kellogg’s corpse. “Looks like he’s got somethin’ pokin’ out of his ear,” she said. “Might be an implant.” You heard a sickening, squelching crack, like stepping on a tree branch sunken in mud. She held something out for your inspection—a slim, curled piece of plastic and wires and synthetic flesh, glistening with blood and a clear fluid you didn’t recognize. “A cyborg. Figures. Should be able to get some good caps for it, though, assumin’ we can find out what it does.”</p><p>Not a synth, but close enough. Was nothing associated with the Institute actually human? Visions of what they might do to Shaun assaulted your mind—experiments in sterile white cages; surgical trays with circuit boards and actuators. An infant was so perfectly malleable, wasn’t it? That was when you threw up.</p><p>When you were finished you stood up straight, wiped your mouth with the back of your hand, and after you blinked away your tears, you noticed Cait watching you. “You’re not thinkin’ of givin’ up, are you?” she asked. You couldn’t answer. “Because you can’t. I won’t let you.”</p><p>The last wisps of your anger stirred in protest, but they evaporated when they reached your lips. All you could do was shake your head.</p><p>She knelt and scooped something off the floor, out of the dissipating smoke. “We can kill every one of these Institute bastards if it means gettin’ to your boy,” she said, a vow you would’ve backed wholeheartedly not ten minutes before. Something cold and metallic was pressed into your hands: Kellogg’s revolver.</p><p>You unloaded it and tucked it into your belt, next to your knife. “I don’t want to be here anymore,” you said quietly—though what “here” meant wasn’t something you were willing to consider. Cait nodded, and the way her brow knit, the way she worked her tongue around the inside of her mouth, like she was trying to find the right thing to say but couldn’t, pulled the air from your lungs.</p><p>You combed through the rest of the room in a daze, looking for notes, terminal entries, something. Anything. The only clue you found was a mission log from Kellogg confirming what he had told you: Shaun was with the Institute, traded for caps like a piece of salvage. The walls began to press inward; you struggled to breathe. Cait had to pry your hands away from where you had locked them onto the desk’s edge; she kept a hold on one as she led you to the elevator, Kellogg’s congealing blood smearing across her fingers. You trailed behind, your skull and legs filled with lead. The inside of the elevator felt like a casket.</p><p>In retrospect, the arrival of the Prydwen should have filled you with some sort of emotion: dread, maybe, or awe. But in the moment, battle-weary husk that you were, the airship’s immense shadow over Fort Hagen’s roof, the vertibirds buzzing around it like bees to a hive, its booming amplifiers promising peaceful intentions… evoked absolutely nothing.</p><p>“Holy shite,” Cait breathed. Your hand was still gripped in hers. “<em>That’s</em> the Brotherhood of Steel?”</p><p>It was a show of power, an intimidation tactic, same as the U.S. military rolling through Canada in the mid-60s, when you marched with the 108th. As you recalled, General Babcock claimed peaceful intentions back then, too. If the Brotherhood was anything like the Army they so desperately wanted to emulate… they were going to war. But who was worth this display? Who were they fighting?</p><p>You needed to speak with Danse.</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Telophase</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Recruits often find their first visit to the Prydwen uncomfortable. I suggest not looking down,” Danse said as you stepped off the vertibird and onto the flight deck.</p><p>Too late. The world stretched wide between your feet, swaying gently with the diamond plated metal of the Prydwen’s deck. Boston’s airport below you, half-devoured by the ocean, littered with the wrecks of planes stripped bare by scavengers, like skeletons picked clean by vultures and left to bleach in the sun. Then the city to the north and the west, buried in a white mist so thick even the Mass Fusion building could barely penetrate it; only the top of its twin rooftop cylinders poked through the fog. And the Atlantic to the east, an untraversable distance with a fairy tale land at the end of it. For all you knew, Europe in 2287 was heaven on earth. In your time, it was a hellscape of squabbling nations after the European Commonwealth’s collapse, emaciated by decades of unsuccessful resource grabs and petty dictators playing at war with their citizens’ lives.</p><p>But it didn’t matter. Europe was gone and so was the United States. There were no countries anymore—just people; floundering in the dirt, trying to survive. Survival was why you were here, five hundred feet above ground in a floating military base, sweaty palms grabbing the frozen guardrails and vertigo turning your brain and stomach to mush.</p><p>Not that Danse needed to know that. “I was a lot higher in the air than this during jump school,” you told him. “I’m fine.” That you spent the majority of those five weeks with your eyes closed, trying not to puke, seemed like an unnecessary detail.</p><p>“In that case: as you’re not currently wearing a parachute—or power armor—I suggest not falling off the walkways.”</p><p>Power armor was rated for falls of up to two hundred meters. Theoretically. You considered giving Danse a push to test it out, for science.</p><p>Cait—whose enthusiasm for heights was simultaneously adorable and enviable—seemed to have similar thoughts. “Bein’ around this lot is almost startin’ to make that sound like a grand idea.” She grinned wickedly. “Bet it happens all the time: you Brotherhood blokes get sick of this shite and just—” She gave a thin, high-pitched whistle and arced her hand over the railing, then elbowed you in the ribs. “Do you s’pose they have to yell ‘for Elder Maxson!’ before they splat all over the ground?”</p><p>Danse did not seemed pleased by the idea. Or any of this, really. That, at least, was something the two of you could agree on.</p><p>“She goes where I go,” you said, wrapping an arm around her waist to illustrate your point. “Deal with it.”</p><p>You thought he might try ordering her off the ship (and oh, you would have loved to see him try), but instead he merely sighed. “Make sure she stays out of trouble. Her actions will reflect on the both of us.”</p><p>You looked at Cait—who offered her most angelic smile—and said, “You heard the man. Stay out of trouble.” You’d have better luck telling a brahmin not to shit all over the road.</p><p>“For you, darlin’? Anything.” Leaning over to give you an impromptu kiss on the cheek, she whispered, “It’s only trouble if you get caught.”</p><p>Damn that woman. If you weren’t careful, you were going to fall in love.</p><p>Your moment of adolescent joy was ruined by the approach of a sour-faced man. Older than you or Danse, he wore what looked like a captain’s hat, gunmetal gray with the Brotherhood’s sword and gears on its badge, but you couldn’t spot any other rank insignia on his uniform. Regardless, Danse clearly knew his place in the food chain, snapping to attention with a salute and a request to board, which was summarily granted.</p><p>“Initiate,” Danse said, and it took you a second to remember that was you, “this is Lancer-Captain Kells. He commands the Prydwen and reports to directly to Elder Maxson himself.”</p><p>You had no idea what the hell a “lancer” was supposed to be, but “captain” was a term you were familiar with. So this was a Brotherhood big shot. He certainly looked the part, staring down his nose at you like you were a splatter of bird shit on the Prydwen’s flight deck.</p><p>“Paladin Danse has spoken highly of your abilities,” Kells said, and you had to make a serious effort to avoid snorting in disbelief. “Though I can’t say I see much of a soldier in you.”</p><p>Of course not. “If you saw me with a rifle in my hands, you might change your mind,” you replied tersely. Danse stiffened next to you, but you ignored him. Kells sure as shit wasn’t <em>your</em> captain; you weren’t about to kowtow to him, or Maxson, or anyone else. Your heart suddenly ached for Captain Spencer. You would have followed her into the jaws of hell—though perhaps that’s exactly what you did on your last mission together, all those years ago.</p><p>“Any idiot can fire a gun,” said Kells, interrupting your memories. “It takes much more than that to be a Brotherhood soldier. <em>Respect</em>, for one. You will learn it, or you can get right back in the vertibird to whatever backwater settlement Paladin Danse pulled you out of.”</p><p>Danse stepped in before you could ruin everyone’s day. “I assure you, sir, I will make certain she learns every tenet of our order.” His eyes burned into the top of your head.</p><p>“See that you do, Paladin. We take a great risk bringing in outsiders, and I won’t have an ill-behaved child—no matter how good she might be with a rifle—endangering the Brotherhood.”</p><p>You reverted to an old tactic you used to employ when the Army’s drill sergeants tried to provoke you: biting down on the inside of your cheek while imagining exactly how it would feel to slam your knee right into their balls.</p><p>Kells apparently took your silence for compliance. “Your orders are to report to the command deck for Elder Maxson’s address, after which he has requested to speak with you personally. This is a great honor, Initiate, and I expect you to treat it as such. Understood?”</p><p>You didn’t mean to say it. You absolutely didn’t <em>want</em> to say it, but some ancient, rusted circuit in your brain had sparked to life, and the words sprang from your lips before you could stop them.</p><p>“Yes, sir.”</p><p>You caught Danse’s curt nod of approval and Cait’s incredulous grimace in your peripheral vision and wanted to hurl yourself off the deck. </p><p>The knowing glint in Kells’s eyes was only a further twist of the knife. “Very good,” he said. “You are both dismissed. Ad victoriam.”</p><p>“Ad victoriam,” echoed Danse, his fist over his chest. You said nothing and did nothing, refusing to give them any more satisfaction than your momentary show of obedience already had.</p><p>Danse led you and Cait through a door to the airship proper, and the biting chill of the outside wind was traded for the warm, oil and steel-scented interior. The ceiling in this initial room was low, the rust-spotted support beams not far from Danse’s head; you guessed you’d need to climb the nearby ladder to get to the real belly of the whale. Snatches of conversation floated up from below: coordinates, altitudes, weather predictions. The control room, you assumed. But you followed Danse in the other direction, toward the bow of the ship, where a small crowd stood ramrod straight before a single man at the back wall.</p><p>Danse immediately identified said man as Elder Maxson. You were glad Maxson was considerate enough to give his address in a room with a view—it made it easier to ignore the way Danse and the rest of the Brotherhood cronies gazed at him like he was the second coming of Christ. <em>No singular man makes an army</em>, your father always told you. <em>The best leaders are also the best followers</em>. There was no such wisdom here as Maxson strut about the room, resplendent as a peacock, polished as a pre-war politician, spouting grandiose crap about loyalty and strength and saving humanity from itself.</p><p>You were beginning to wonder if his speech would ever end when you heard the words “the Institute,” and your breath caught fast in your chest. When you shifted your eyes away from the vodka bottle on the side table, Maxson was staring past the throngs of soldiers directly at you, like his words were meant for you alone. You fought the urge to stand at attention like everyone else.</p><p>“The Institute is a malignant growth that needs to be cut before it infects the surface,” he said. You remembered watching Kellogg speak to the Institute’s representative from within his own memories, and your mouth grew dry.</p><p>And then Maxson spoke of synths, and it was so much more than Piper’s suspicious inferences or the shifty-eyed paranoia in Diamond City. It was not President Calvert’s carefully-worded rebuke of China in 2059. It was American soldiers huddled around the heaters in the Anchorage base, cursing the commie bastards who brought them to this frozen hellhole. It was the darkest corners of your mind when you thought of Kellogg or his employer. It was hatred; it was a promise of destruction, and it was something you understood.</p><p>After another round of enthusiastic “ad victoriam”s, the rest of the soldiers filed out, and you and Danse were alone with the Elder—Cait had ducked out during the address, likely looking for trouble elsewhere, though you hoped it was of a more inconspicuous variety. Once you got what you wanted from the Brotherhood of Steel, she could ransack everything that wasn’t bolted down. But until then, you were forced to follow the rules, at least superficially.</p><p>Up close, you were struck by just how <em>young</em> Maxson looked. Despite the dark circles under his eyes and a prominent scar jutting through his beard and across his right cheek, its borders dimpled with old suture marks, he couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. How did he become leader of the Brotherhood? In <em>your</em> military, experience trumped all. And while residents of the modern Commonwealth may have had to grow up fast, you doubted Maxson could have anything more to him than captivating rhetoric and a dramatic scar.</p><p>There was a popular superstition in the military: taking human lives irrevocably changes one’s soul. Soldiers experienced in combat—in killing—were said to have this change reflected in their eyes. Even Nate had commented on it once, looking at the last portrait the Army took of you—the one from your awards ceremony, when the Army Commendation and Purple Heart medals were meant to ease the shame of your failure and forcible retirement. He hadn’t known what your thousand-yard stare meant, but it was something any soldier could immediately identify.</p><p>Elder Maxson did not have a killer’s eyes.</p><p>Danse saluted; you almost expected a bow. “Our new Initiate, sir, as you requested,” he said, offering you up like a choice bottle of champagne.</p><p>“At ease, Paladin Danse. My congratulations on the success of your mission,” said Maxson, and if Danse had a tail, he would’ve wagged it. You turned your head to roll your eyes more discreetly. “Initiate Gutierrez,” Maxson continued, and you glanced back at the Brotherhood’s boy king, “tell me something. You care about the people of the Commonwealth, yes?”</p><p>You most certainly did not. Care was a scarce, precious thing—to give it to the entire Commonwealth would be like bandaging a whole hospital’s worth of patients with a single roll of gauze. “I care about the people I love,” you replied, the most diplomatic answer you could muster.</p><p>Maxson nodded. “Understandable. As a leader, I do not have that luxury. If we are to save these people, I must care about humanity as a whole, which means destroying humanity’s enemies. Danse has told me you’re familiar with the Institute and their vile practices. Is this true?”</p><p>“<em>Very</em> familiar,” you said through gritted teeth.</p><p>Cambridge was your first destination after the disaster at Fort Hagen. You had stormed into the police station, demanding action, demanding an assault on the only enemy worth fighting. Danse, surprisingly, had been amenable to your concerns, if only because his team had just made contact with the Prydwen via the pilfered deep-range transmitter. He asked what you knew of the Institute, and—still reeling from the hollowest of victories—you told him all of it: your husband’s murder and your child’s capture, the search for Kellogg, his demise at your hands, the dead-end trail to his employer. The only card you kept close to the vest was the circumstances that landed you in the Vault in the first place. And now it seemed your confession had made it to the top of the Brotherhood’s hierarchy.</p><p>Unlike Kells, Maxson didn’t appear to care about the lack of “sir”s littering your speech. “So I’ve gathered. But this is a perfect illustration of our common goal: your hatred of the enemy is of a personal nature; mine is of principal. Their intersection is how we win this war.”</p><p>“You’re at war?”</p><p>“<em>We</em>,” Maxson corrected, “are at war, yes. As a member of our order, our cause is your cause, and our war is your war.” He drew himself straight and clasped his hands behind his back. “To facilitate this, and to reward you for your assistance of Recon Squad Gladius, I am promoting you to the rank of Knight.”</p><p>He said this with extreme gravitas, like you were supposed to know what that title meant. In the 108th, you made it to buck sergeant, and were close to making staff sergeant before you entered Special Forces. Those ranks were explicitly defined, from your salary to your duties to the pins on your lapels. “Knight” meant nothing to you.</p><p>But attacking the Institute did. “The Institute has my son,” you pressed, purposely forgoing a thank you for your new bullshit rank. “When will we”—the word felt foreign and bitter in your mouth—“initiate the attack?”</p><p>A brief, grim half-smile twitched at the right corner of Maxson’s lips. “Your enthusiasm is appreciated, Knight. And I understand your concern. But this battle goes beyond your personal grievances. It will take time to prepare: we must secure resources, identify points of attack, train our men,” he said, ticking off each point on his fingers. “When we’re ready to begin our assault, I promise you will be among the first to know. Until then, I suggest you make yourself familiar with the Prydwen and her crew. This is your home now, and the Brotherhood is your family. You should get to know them.”</p><p>You’d rather scrub the piss tanks on every suit of power armor in the Brotherhood’s possession. “So, hurry up and wait, then.”</p><p>“Indeed,” he replied, and gave that same smile. It was even more infuriating than Kells’s naked disdain.</p><p>“I will accompany her, sir,” Danse said, looming behind you—a reminder to play nice you were not keen on heeding.</p><p>“Excellent,” said Maxson. “When we’re ready to move, I’ll relay my orders to you, Paladin.” That was apparently your cue to leave.</p><p>If Danse could have dragged you out by the ear without losing a hand, he surely would have. “That behavior was not becoming of an Initiate, much less a Knight,” he scolded once you were out of Maxson’s earshot. “It’s not our place to question orders.”</p><p>You noticed Cait leaning against the stairwell to the lower decks, inspecting her nails, pretending not to watch you get lectured, and you thought about the way she looked at you after the conversation with Kells. “I don’t give a shit about orders or what behavior you find <em>appropriate</em>,” you shot back at Danse. “I want my son. That’s it. When I get him, I’m done with all of this.”</p><p>Danse was as mad as you had ever seen him; the power armor masked more subtle gestures, but his tone—each individual word like sharpened steel—made his mood obvious. “Then do as you’re told. Get to know the people who are going to help you find your son. You’re their sister now, no matter your feelings on the matter. <em>Act like it</em>.”</p><p>His irritation gave you a twisted sort of pleasure, soothing the pain of knowing, deep down, that he was absolutely right. “Fine,” you said. “But I don’t need you holding my hand.”</p><p>“Glad to hear it,” he snapped, and his sarcasm was finally crystal clear. “I have no desire to continue watching you shame yourself in front of our leaders.”</p><p>Without another word, he spun around and climbed the ladder leading to the rest of the ship, the sound of his boots on the aluminum floor fading into the background hum of the Prydwen’s thrusters. It was then that Cait pushed herself off the stairwell and approached you, and had Danse not already raised your hackles, the stiffness in Cait’s gait and the frown on her face would have easily done the job. She was a woman who wore her heart on her sleeve, and—like everyone else today—her heart was angry.</p><p>“I saw you talkin’ to Maxson,” she said, too calmly.</p><p>You sighed and braced for impact. “What, are you gonna reprimand me, too?”</p><p>“Damn right I am. Why’re you playin’ yesman for these nobs?”</p><p>“Seriously?” Of all the reasons for Cait to be upset with you, being <em>too agreeable</em> with the Brotherhood was nowhere on your radar. “You call what I said to Maxson being a yesman?”</p><p>“You think these Brotherhood gobshites don’t have what it takes to wipe out the Institute right now? He’s stallin’,” she hissed, then jabbed a finger into your chest, “and you’re lettin’ him do it.”</p><p>“So you think I should have just, what?” You raised your hands, palms up, helpless in the face of this inanity. “Put a knife to his throat? Taken the pilot hostage?”</p><p>“I think you shouldn’t be goin’ around sayin’ ‘yes, sir’ to people who don’t give a fuck about you.”</p><p>Heat surged up your neck and across your face. Anthony had called you not long after retirement, and his admonishment—the whole damn conversation had been an admonishment—sounded so much like Cait’s. <em>Obedience comes with a price</em>, he had said. <em>You trade a piece of your soul for the security of not needing to think for yourself</em>. But you weren’t being obedient, not anymore. You hadn’t been since the week after that awards ceremony, when you limped down to the Charles River and dumped your beret and your medals and your deference into its swirling current.</p><p>“Jesus, Cait.” You needed to make her understand. Somehow. “You don’t know how these groups work, okay? I do. You need to play their game a little to get what you want out of them.”</p><p>Cait shook her head, unconvinced. “Quit lying,” she said. “We both know you’re shite at it.”</p><p>“What the hell do you want from me?”</p><p>It was her turn to sigh. “Just…” Her fire extinguished, she pressed her palm to your collarbone, curving her fingers against your shoulder. “Don’t forget who you are. That’s all.”</p><p>You closed your eyes and breathed—slow, full, controlled breaths, the sort you hadn’t taken once since you stepped onto the Prydwen. “I won’t,” you promised. How could you? The Brotherhood members couldn’t stop reminding you that you didn’t belong; it felt like your entire being was formed in opposition, in negative space.</p><p>Before you left Cait to her own devices, you kissed her, half-hoping some Brotherhood stooge was watching. You weren’t one of them, and you’d make sure they never forgot it.</p><p>That conviction, however, grew fuzzy along the margins as you wandered through the ship. It was an immense beast of a thing, far larger than it looked from the outside, with multiple levels and rooms crammed in every available space, metal on metal on metal. On the surface, it was like no base you had ever been in. But the claustrophobia, the utter absence of privacy… that was familiar. And the sounds—superiors barking orders, pneumatic drills and arc welders in the power armor bays, boisterous laughter and tough-guy threats—sent your mind hurtling into the past.</p><p>As the Sino-American war ramped up, you spent more time on deployment than at home, and more time in spartan combat outposts than cushy main bases. You never <em>enjoyed</em> it, but there was a strange comfort in mutual suffering, in having someone beside you in the trenches. When you walked past a pair of Brotherhood soldiers cleaning their rifles and complaining about the food, you momentarily forgot where you were. God, you missed it. Why did you miss it?</p><p>You were torn in two directions, two eras, walking a poorly-stitched seam between past and present, a liminal space no one was meant to exist in. These were not your brothers and sisters. They were not Captain Spencer or the other members of your ODA: men and women you would have gladly died for, had you only had the chance. They weren’t even Sgt. Baker, callous but caring, in his own way. Those were soldiers forged in a different time, before nuclear bombs and ghouls and super mutants. Before synths. Their enemies were—no matter how they tried to convince themselves otherwise—other humans, not everything-but-humans. They fought for a country that no longer existed. <em>You</em> fought for a country that no longer existed. You were still a part of them, no matter what you tried to drown in the Charles.</p><p>What did these Brotherhood soldiers fight for? Humanity? Maxson? To hoard the last scraps of your war for themselves? You looked up at the roof of the Prydwen and wondered what part of your old life it was stolen from.</p><p>You eventually found yourself in an undersized mess hall, and, with nothing else to do, took a seat in the corner. The Brotherhood members hadn’t tried talking to you while you meandered through their base, choosing to ignore you or stare at you instead. In truth, you were grateful for the animosity—you weren’t in the most congenial of moods.</p><p>But then you heard a familiar ponderous throat clearing, and glanced up to see Danse, a man whose timing consistently left much to be desired. He was, for the first time, outside his power armor and wearing a clean uniform, and it took you a moment to reconcile that he was not actually seven feet tall and too wide to fit through a doorway head-on. His hair was slightly damp and he smelled like soap. The thought that there might be some kind of showering facilities on the Prydwen suddenly made spending time here much more appealing.</p><p>Speaking to Danse, however, was less appealing. “What do you want?” you said wearily, not ready for another fight. At least not in the same day; you might be ready for round two after a nap.</p><p>He was fidgeting with something in his hands. “I had your holotags made,” he said, and held them out for you to take.</p><p>Ludicrously, the backs of your eyes prickled with tears as you rolled the chain through your fingers. “Tossed my last set of these in the river,” you admitted, voice thick. “And here they are again.” A broken back and two hundred years, and you still couldn’t get away from it.</p><p>“Is it different?” Danse asked, an odd, soft note threaded through the question. “From the military you knew?”</p><p>The tags lacked your blood type (O+) and religion (Catholic, technically), but there was “Gutierrez, Maria G.” at the top and below it, a registration number: GT-552K. “It is,” you said, eventually, “and it isn’t. The combatants might be different, but… war never changes, right?”</p><p>“I suppose that’s true.”</p><p>Why did he insist on humoring you? “Do you even know what the Army was?” you asked, your tone sharper than you felt. “When it existed?”</p><p>“Of course.” Danse began rambling facts as though he were taking an exam. “The United States Army was the largest of five military branches before its destruction in the Great War of 2077. Primarily a land force. Separated into divisions and led by the U.S. president acting as Commander in Chief.”</p><p>“And you didn’t think to ask how it was possible for me to be a part of something that hasn’t existed for over two centuries?”</p><p>Danse’s shoulders raised fractionally. “It didn’t seem pertinent to ask at the time,” he said, then paused, clasping his hands together like he wanted to crack his knuckles but couldn’t. You wished he would sit down, or leave; anything but stand awkwardly in front of you. “But if you would like to share it now,” he added carefully, “I would be interested to know.”</p><p>You pulled one hand away from kneading your temples long enough to wave at the chair beside you. “Fine. Sit, and I’ll tell you.”</p><p>He sat, and you told him, giving a surface-level overview of your time in the military, from the 108th to SF to your retirement—glossing over what led to the latter. And then the bombs and the vault, the cryogenic stasis and waking up to a nightmare. Danse listened intently, nodding frequently but asking no questions of his own while you spoke. When you finished, your throat parched from talking and your head heavy with the weight of old memories, he was silent for a long time.</p><p>Finally, he said, “I feel I owe you an apology.” You thought your jaw might hit the table. “I was fixated on our differences when I should have focused on our similarities.”</p><p>“I… thank you,” you said, at a loss. And maybe a little uncomfortable with the idea that you might have any similarity to Paladin Danse.</p><p>“I should try to explain myself. Did you ever have a superior who was…” He gestured vaguely, searching for the right words. “Extra hard on you? Like he—or she—had singled you out specifically to make your life miserable?”</p><p>You snorted. “Every one of them?” you joked, then added quickly before the humor could inevitably fly over Danse’s head, “But yes, I know what you’re talking about. There were more than a few instructors who seemed to have it out for me personally. God, I had this one drill sergeant we all called ‘the Dragon.’ She either hated me or wanted to fuck me; I could never tell. Maybe both.”</p><p>Danse flushed scarlet. “Neither of those conditions are applicable to our situation. I was only hoping to draw a parallel between—”</p><p>“Who was your hardass CO, then?” you interrupted, knowing full well where he was trying to lead the discussion. Good thing for Danse that he didn’t telegraph in battle the way he did in conversation, or he’d be a hell of a lot more dead.</p><p>“Paladin Krieg,” he said. “My sponsor when I was an Initiate. He pushed me harder than anyone else on our squad. Not once did he let up. And I never understood why.”</p><p>“Danse,” you said gently, though you didn’t know why you were trying to soften the blow, “this isn’t the same thing. I’m not some young, naive soldier fresh out of basic, bursting with potential and in need of a stern guiding hand. I’m old and beat up. I’m cynical.” You disliked the way the inside corners of his brows were tilting up. “Christ, I’m <em>tired</em>. I did all that shit before, and I’m not doing it again. It’s just—it’s not my life anymore.”</p><p>Danse, you had noticed, was terrible at eye contact, staring directly at you for an unsettlingly long period of time before remembering to blink. You ignored that, locking eyes with him. His irises were lighter than yours, a warm honey-brown to your umber, but in the whole of his eyes, you saw a reflection of your own—the pain of loss; a veteran’s detachment. A killer’s eyes.</p><p>“Why not?” he asked.</p><p>In the three years after your retirement and before the bombs fell, you thought of a million reasons, a million answers to that same question.</p><p>You stared at the holotags in your hands and couldn’t remember any of them.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Cytokinesis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Everyone thought the molecular relay would kill you. You wished it had.</p><p>You saw the spark of disbelief in Cait’s eyes when you stumbled through the front door of the place you’d purchased in Diamond City, the one you couldn’t yet bring yourself to call “home.” You didn’t remember the walk south from the ruins of CIT, and you barely heard your name—a rapid three syllables collected in a gasp of surprise—from Cait’s mouth. Your brain was still locked within pristine white walls and chrome trim, still wrapped in detached expressions and coolly-described atrocities.</p><p>Cait walked over to you and gently touched your arm as though to make sure you were solid and real. You watched her doubt melt into unabashed relief. “We were all makin’ bets on whether you’d come back in one piece,” she said, the tremble in her voice belying the attempt at levity.</p><p>Looking at her made your stomach wind itself into knots. You swallowed past the nausea rising in your throat and brushed by her to start digging through the nightstand, past scraps of paper and bottle caps, until you found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. You didn’t know why or when you had bothered to stash them in there—you hadn’t smoked in ages. Vault 95 had wiped your cravings away, scrubbing your brain until it was like you had never once taken a drag or tossed back a shot or jabbed a needle in your veins.</p><p>But you wanted it now. You wanted all of it now, every kind of poison you could scrounge up and slam into your body. What did it matter? <em>Do it for your son</em>, Cait had begged in the detox room when your will faltered. You got into that wretched chair with your baby boy’s face stamped across your mind, but he was gone, he was—</p><p>No. You jammed the filter between your lips and flicked the wheel of the lighter until the spark caught, and your hands shook while you brought the flame toward the tip of the cigarette. When the first mouthful of stale, greasy smoke slipped across your tongue you nearly gagged, but the rancid taste was something to focus on. It was dirty, imperfect. Like you. Like humans.</p><p>Springs creaked as Cait sat on the bed. She didn’t question your sudden urge to smoke, but you could feel her eyes on you, cutting through the heavy tension of your silence. There was a bond between you now—so strong even you couldn’t deny it—built like a Raider stronghold, all barbed wire and rusted metal, cobbled together from shared misery and bloody triumph. In your darkest moments, you relied on her to see you through. You harbored each other’s secrets and fears, whispered in the dead of night when sleep was hard to come by. What started as a fragile indulgence, a mutual desperation for non-threatening human contact, had grown into something you never imagined possible in the wasteland. Neither of you had put a name to it out loud, but it seemed inevitable one of you would soon.</p><p>You were not unused to love in times of war. The few women who came before the bombs, the ones who managed to snatch your attention for longer than a night, wove themselves into your heart despite the constant threat of destruction looming over your head. Two were civilians, girls you met between deployments. They watched you board the planes to Alaska, their eyes brimming with tears, trusting you would come home. One was a fellow soldier during your time in the 108th. That was a grimmer sort of love, a love that understood the risks and eschewed thoughts of the future. That relationship was also built on trust—in her combat prowess, in your will to survive, in knowing you both fought for the same side.</p><p>It was the sort of love you thought you might have with Cait. She was as much a warrior as you, a veteran in the endless battle of the post-apocalypse. But your trust was decimated when Kellogg’s bullet blasted through Nate’s chest, and what little remained afterward was left to die on the Institute’s polished floors.</p><p>Halfway through your second cigarette, you looked at her again, and you saw a stranger.</p><p>But you had to be sure. You had to quell your stupid, gullible heart. The words worked their way through the gravity well in your chest and the acrid desert in your mouth.</p><p>“Are you a synth?” It was the second time you had asked that question, but it wouldn’t be the last.</p><p>Cait made a sound, a strangled bark of laughter. “A <em>what?"</em> she exclaimed, nonplussed. Her fingers tangled into the bedsheets.</p><p>“A synth. Tell me the truth.” Your lungs ached with every smoke-filled breath, but you were already thinking about the next one, gaze flicking to the pack on the nightstand. You’d take this cigarette down to the filter and go back for more.</p><p>“Me? A goddamn synth? Christ, have you gone mad?” Her expression cycled from irritation to concern. “What the hell happened in there?”</p><p>What <em>did</em> happen? It was like a fever dream, or the withdrawal-fueled nightmares you had in the weeks before Vault 95. There was the sweaty-palmed anticipation as you stood on the reflector platform, electric arcs raising the hairs on the back of your neck, the whir of the signal interceptor drilling into your skull and drowning out Ingram’s shouted instructions. And then—you must have blinked—you were <em>there</em> on another platform, trading the wide open sky of the airport for the claustrophobic hallways of the Institute. It felt like nothing at all: no atoms ripping apart, not even a hint of vertigo. It was a quick, painless death, with your soul instantly delivered to hell.</p><p>“Prove it,” was all you could say. “Prove to me you’re human.”</p><p>“I can’t just—” A flash of recognition and she was on her feet, eyes narrowed, and you had to clasp your hands together to keep from reaching for your sidearm. “Wait,” Cait said, carefully. “Where is Shaun?”</p><p>Hearing his name sundered you. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” you muttered. Shaun was dead—murdered so Father and his synths could live. <em>Through science, we are family</em>…</p><p>“What? Why would you—”</p><p>“<em>Tell me</em> the only person I’ve let near me in this shithole of a world isn’t a fucking Institute spy!” Your voice had gone shrill, filling the one-room shack; you only vaguely realized how deranged you sounded.</p><p>Cait kept her distance, the backs of her knees braced against the mattress, but she was just as loud, parrying your words with an accusation of her own. “A spy? Are you fuckin’ serious?” She mimed dragging a knife through her abdomen. “Should I just carve myself open so you can see I’m made of flesh an’ blood?”</p><p>You shook your head. “That won’t work. Real synths are made of flesh and blood, too.”</p><p>And you knew, because you saw them made: the skeletons suspended above you in metal hoops; the hinged robotic limbs painting bands of muscle; the tendons and ligaments sprouting like daisies. The bodies birthed from chemical pools, walking single file to the processing room where they would be assigned their personalities, their lives. One after the other, like a conveyor belt of parts at the car factory. An assembly line of androids, their brains a blank terminal screen ready to be programmed. There were so damn many.</p><p>“But they can’t get sick, can they?” Cait tried. “How could a synth be a junkie? You think they could fuck themselves up the way I did? For years?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” you admitted, your paranoia teetering between disappointment and victory. You started to babble: “You said it yourself: it should’ve killed you. But it never did. Maybe that’s why. I mean, it makes sense, right? Your former handler, Tommy? An Institute informant, apparently. Would’ve been real easy to plant you in the Combat Zone to send along with me as a fake merc if I happened to stop by. How fucking convenient that Tommy just let his best fighter walk.”</p><p>“For fuck’s sake!” Cait sputtered. She looked as if you’d just backhanded her. “You really believe this shite? What we have, what we’ve shared—it’s all been a lie? This whole time?”</p><p>“Wouldn’t be the first—”</p><p>“We were savin’ each other’s lives in scraps, gettin’ cleaned up at the vault, trying to find your son”—you flinched—“and you think I just, what? Rolled out of bed to ring up the Institute, like,”—her voice broke, followed by your heart—“‘I let her touch me for the first time tonight, an’ I think I might be in love?’”</p><p>Cait, you had learned, was not a covert crier. The moment the tears arrived, she was always a red-faced mess, eyes puffy and voice hoarse. You spotted the onset now: a pink bloom across her eyes and nose, highlighting the green in her irises. She angrily brushed the backs of her fingers across her cheeks and turned away, like she couldn’t bear for you to see her. Or maybe she just couldn’t bear to see you. You couldn’t blame her.</p><p>“I don’t know,” you said. “I don’t know.” The cigarette butt fell to the floor; you gave it a cursory smash with the toe of your boot before dropping into a nearby chair. You pressed your palms to your forehead, dug your nails into your scalp. “God help me, I <em>don’t know</em>.”</p><p>“Maria,” Cait said, voice thick, then paused, waiting for you to peel your face away from your hands long enough to look at her. She was sitting on the bed again, gripping the pack of cigarettes until the cardboard buckled. “Wise up and <em>listen</em>. I came out of that awful bitch of a mother, not a damn test tube. I’m fuckin’ <em>human</em>. To the bone.”</p><p>As she spoke, she pulled out each cigarette and snapped it in half, covering the floorboards with dusty tobacco and rolling paper. You didn’t have the strength to protest. Grasping at whatever slippery, ephemeral strands of logic your half-dead brain could concoct, you tried to recall what the Institute scientists had told you. They were so open with their theorems and hypotheses, like they had waited decades just to tell you. So eager to talk, to bring you into their fold—the mother of their god, the Mary to their Jesus. Their feelings for the synths ranged from enthusiasm to disdain, but one belief held fast: the synths were tools, slaves for their human masters, and nothing was more dangerous than a synth that chose to ignore that decree and remember its own humanity.</p><p>There. That was the key. “What’s your earliest memory?” you asked Cait.</p><p>Yours was a pleasant one: visiting the zoo with your family a few weeks before you started kindergarten. It was still so vivid—sitting on your father’s shoulders under the summer sun, pretending you were as tall as the giraffes. Holding your mother’s hand, laughing at the penguins. You were happy then, in the years before Anthony’s trial, before your parents’ divorce, before the world fell apart.</p><p>Cait frowned, suspicious. “What? Why?”</p><p>“Just tell me. In detail. The first clear one you have from childhood.”</p><p>“Fine,” she said, and picked at a hangnail. “I was around four. Sittin’ on the floor of our home, playin’. Normal kid stuff. Wasn’t allowed to have toys, so I just tied some crap I found outside together and pretended they were dolls. You know, this doll falls in love with that doll, that sort of thing. Me mother opened the door and started screamin’. Said I was bein’ too loud.” Her gaze slid out of focus and her voice dulled to a quiet monotone. Your heart started to pound. “She was doin’ laundry outside; had a shirt in her hands. A blue shirt. She held me down and put that shirt over my face, across me nose and mouth. I couldn’t breathe.”</p><p>Your own breathing was proving hard to steady, as though in unconscious sympathy. “Okay, I get it,” you said. “You don’t have to say anything else.”</p><p>“You asked,” Cait replied, then shrugged. “Ma wasn’t a big woman, and I guess I was thrashin’ too hard for her to finish the job. But I can still remember the feeling of me lungs burnin’. Like my chest was turnin’ itself inside out trying to get air. I think that was the first time I realized how easy dyin’ could be. I don’t remember being scared of her before that, but after…” She bit her lip, and the look on her face felt like a point-blank shot to the temple. “Now,” she said darkly, “you better have a damn good reason for makin’ me think of that shite again.”</p><p>“They told me when they’re ready to send the synths out into the world, they try to give them the memories of the human they’re replacing. But it doesn’t always work right. There’s gaps, especially in the early years.” Gaps would have been a mercy for Cait. You should’ve known, but her proof was a bitter pill to swallow, and the feeble relief it brought did little to blunt your regret.</p><p>“Who’s ‘they?’ Who told you that?” Cait asked.</p><p>“It was… Shaun.”</p><p>Cait stared blankly at you. And why wouldn’t she? It all seemed so ludicrous within the tortured confines of your own head; you could only imagine how it sounded to someone who hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t seen <em>him</em>, calmly watching you with Nate’s blue eyes while you struggled to grasp the years you’d lost. Someone who hadn’t heard him explain that your release from the vault was merely an experiment, the whims of a callous scientist. You did not know that man. He was as much your son as the child-synth facsimile he left in a cage to greet you.</p><p>Shaun was gone. But how were you supposed to mourn someone who was still alive?</p><p>You explained as best you could. Sixty years, gone in an anesthetized heartbeat. Your infant son, now twice your age and raised by the Institute, stolen for his untainted DNA—Nate’s DNA, <em>your</em> DNA. Nate, the “collateral damage,” and you, the godforsaken “backup.” Your life was ruined for the sake of humanity’s remaining elite. They huddled in their underground paradise while you crawled like a worm on the radiation-blighted surface. They coveted Shaun’s nature while nurture turned him into an unfeeling monster. And you were told to feel <em>proud</em>.</p><p>When you finished, Cait leaned back and sighed. “Fuckin’ hell.”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“And now they’ve got you thinkin’ everyone out here is a synth,” she said plainly, openly, her early indignation creeping back in.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>You didn’t want to argue. You didn’t want to do anything. Love, anger, life, death… you wanted none of it. You longed for the suspended animation of the cryopod, the suffocating embrace of its frozen arms, the peace of eternal, dreamless sleep. He never should have woken you up. You never should have made it out of Alaska.</p><p>Cait stood again and stared at you for a time while she rocked back and forth on her heels, her arms wrapped around herself. It was close to sunset, and beams of orange pushed through the remaining bits of glass in the boarded-up windows, lighting up the threadbare blanket covering the sagging mattress and the dust motes swirling around Cait’s feet. Snatches of conversation filtered in from outside—laughter, vendors haggling, plans for later that night. It was always noisy here on the wheel’s edge of the market. You had considered it an acceptable trade-off when you bought the place; such a central location was surely worth a little drunken screaming at three in the morning. Those first few nights, it was almost charming. You listened to the bedlam with Cait in your arms while the two of you giggled and made up stories about the people outside. A tiny scrap of normalcy, of hope for the future.</p><p>“Look, I need some time to think about all this,” Cait said at last; you could tell she was making a concerted effort to remain calm. “And I think you do, too.” She opened the door, briefly letting Diamond City flood in, then turned to look over her shoulder. “Don’t you dare try anythin’ stupid while I’m gone.”</p><p>The door closed behind her with a barely suppressed slam.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Caspase</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Please tell me some other biology nerd out there is liking these chapter titles.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next day, you returned to the Prydwen.</p><p>Danse was in his room when you passed, sitting at his desk and reading what looked like an old paperback. When he saw you, he stood and said, “You’re back.” Like most of his interactions with you, it was bereft of any kind of discernible emotion, but Danse’s impassiveness was somehow easier to take than Cait’s relief, or Ingram’s aloof skepticism when you gave her the network scanner holotape upon arriving at the airport.</p><p>“Yup,” you replied, hoping he wouldn’t ask for details.</p><p>He didn’t. “If you’re returning to Elder Maxson for debriefing, I should accompany you.”</p><p>“Fine.”</p><p>Maxson received you in his quarters. A little too personal for your taste, though you supposed the Prydwen didn’t exactly offer much in the way of spare command rooms. To your surprise, Maxson’s room was a relatively plain space—no gaudy banners or gilded furniture. Not even a super mutant’s head mounted on the wall. Just a bed, a few chairs around a table, and a desk with a terminal.</p><p>“There’s the woman of the hour!” Maxson announced, all smiles. It put you on edge; joy didn’t suit his face. “I’ve already been informed of Dr. Li’s imminent arrival. Was she difficult to convince?”</p><p>You barely remembered. When you spoke to Li, she seemed more concerned about her former colleague than who she worked for, continuously grilling you on Virgil’s whereabouts. You gave her what she wanted, did your best to feed her some bullshit about how much the Brotherhood needed her, and that was that.</p><p>“Not particularly,” you answered.</p><p>“Good, good. Sometimes people merely need a reminder of where they belong.” Maxson crossed his arms and leaned against the table—an oddly casual posture for an official meeting. “And what of you, Knight? Did you find what you expected?”</p><p>The words poured out of you automatically. “Yes, sir. The Institute is making fleets of synths. The more rudimentary models appear to be the bulk of their forces, but they’ve created a number of what they call ‘Gen-3’ synths that are indistinguishable from human beings. Several have already been installed throughout the Commonwealth to replace humans the Institute has kidnapped, interrogated, and likely murdered.”</p><p>“Replacements?” His lip curled with blatant disgust. “Were you able to determine the motives for these atrocities?”</p><p>“Primarily espionage, from what I could tell. I believe they’re planning an eventual expansion to the surface.”</p><p>“The situation is even more dire than I imagined. We will need to proceed to the next phase of our offensive as soon as possible.” Pushing off from the table, Maxson trained his gaze on you, then Danse. “Knight Gutierrez, Paladin Danse,” he said. Your back straightened and your shoulders pulled back of their own accord. “Your performance thus far has been exemplary. Therefore, I am tasking the two of you with spearheading our latest initiative.”</p><p>You caught Danse’s eye in your peripheral vision. “It would be an honor, sir,” he said for you.</p><p>“We’ve retrieved the remains of Liberty Prime,” Maxson declared, then paused, as if that name was supposed to provoke a reaction.</p><p>Danse, at least, appeared to know what the hell it was. “I thought the Enclave destroyed Prime a decade ago,” he said, eyebrows raised.</p><p>“They did. But the Brotherhood of Steel won’t be deterred by a little repair work.” Maxson smiled again, almost wistfully. “With the help of Proctor Ingram, Dr. Li, and now you, we will return Liberty Prime to the field of battle.”</p><p>“Excuse me,” you said, “but who—or what—is Liberty Prime?”</p><p>“Ah,” said Maxson. “Of course you wouldn’t know. Liberty Prime is a combat robot; an understatement of its capabilities, to be sure. In truth, it’s a technological marvel, perhaps the greatest military asset ever produced. It was developed in secret to extinguish the Chinese presence in Anchorage, though the United States military was unable to make it fully operational before the Great War occurred. Dr. Li and others in the Brotherhood salvaged it ten years ago and restored it to its former glory. As Paladin Danse mentioned, it was destroyed. But if we rebuilt it once, we can rebuild it again, and use it to crush the Institute.”</p><p>The greatest military asset ever produced, and you hadn’t heard a damn thing about it. Not within your pay grade, apparently. How good could it possibly be? You rarely fought alongside robots during the war. They were expensive, prone to failure in the cold, and impossible to repair without trained personnel and a stockpile of parts. Not to mention a bug in their code could mean the murder of an entire platoon. Maybe losing an army of bots would’ve been easier for the public to stomach, but nothing General Atomics or RobCo pumped out could ever beat a flesh and blood soldier.</p><p>Maxson must have taken your silence for awe. “It is truly an impressive machine,” he continued. “But it requires weapons. Proctor Ingram has informed me that Prime is meant to be equipped with Mark 28 nuclear warheads.”</p><p>A faint sense of unease stirred in your gut. Mark 28s were Air Force toys—way outside your purview—but you knew what they were for. The flyboys would have blocked out the Chinese sun with them while you were being loaded into Vault 111’s cryopods.</p><p>“Quite the arsenal,” Danse remarked.</p><p>“Indeed. Our scribes have located a potential stockpile within the Glowing Sea. I want the two of you to retrieve it. Rendezvous with Scribe Haylen at the communications point outside the Sea; she will have further details when you arrive. Is this understood?”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” you and Danse said in unison. The thought of venturing into that hellhole again should have filled you with dread, but it rolled off you like water poured into a cup already full to the brim.</p><p>Maxson nodded. “Then you are dismissed. Make me proud, soldiers. Ad victoriam.”</p><p>As though your body belonged to another, you pressed your fist to your chest while your tongue and mouth formed the words. “Ad victoriam,” you said.</p>
<hr/><p>The border of the Glowing Sea stretched out in front of you like the debrided edges of a wound gone necrotic—littered with stripped trees and mangled skeletons, the dirt under your feet turning to sand, then rock, too barren for even the hardiest rad-adapted weeds to survive. Roiling, pus-colored fog obscured your view less than a mile into the Sea, but you knew what you’d find there: death and desolation, the preserved remains of humanity’s extinction.</p><p>Danse spoke with Haylen while you half-assed guarding the perimeter, their voices low enough that you couldn’t follow the conversation even if you wanted to. Haylen had greeted you warmly when you arrived, as if you were an old friend instead of a distant, recalcitrant associate. And not just her; the other scribes—complete strangers—smiled and waved. You stumbled over the bare minimum of social niceties before anxiety’s grip around your throat sent you careening for solitude near the collapsed freeway at the waypoint’s boundary line.</p><p>Eventually, Haylen wandered away, and Danse summoned you over to two empty and waiting T-60s, their helmets resting on the ground beside him. Pushing aside your eternal distaste for power armor, you reached for the release wheel, but Danse held a hand up, stopping you.</p><p>“Hold on, Knight,” he said. “We need to do safety checks first. I won’t have us dying of radiation sickness out there due to negligence.”</p><p>You stared at the suit in front of you: a hulking mass of metal plates and pipes; a complex machine you couldn’t hope to understand. The last time you ventured into the Sea in search of Dr. Virgil, you had strapped into the armor without a second thought, assuming Ingram or one of her underlings had already checked it. No better protection than ignorance.</p><p>“I’ve never done safety checks on power armor,” you admitted. “But it was fine when I was out here before, and I haven’t touched it since.”</p><p>Danse looked like you just told him you enjoyed lighting puppies on fire in your spare time. “The military didn’t teach you how to inspect your armor? Was no one concerned about radiation leaks?”</p><p>“We weren’t exactly marching through a nuclear wasteland back then,” you muttered. “And besides, I was just the heavy. We had engineers and mechanics to handle the suits.” That made you think of Lucy Shields and Jaime Castillo, the Engineer Sergeants of ODA 248—and the unlucky bastards in charge of maintaining your T-45. You gripped the release wheel harder, sorely tempted to crack it open and leave Danse behind, safety checks be damned.</p><p>“Specialization is a luxury. Every Brotherhood soldier should know basic power armor maintenance. I could assist you”—he met your glare, undaunted—“if you wanted.”</p><p>Christ. You were not getting out of this. “I mean, it feels like a waste of time. But sure, if it’ll make you happy, go right ahead.”</p><p>“You have strange ideas about what brings me joy.” He stooped to grab some supplies out of a nearby toolbox.</p><p>“You haven’t smiled once since we’ve met,” you said, taking the offered pair of gloves and tugging them on. “Forgive me for getting imaginative.”</p><p>“The most likely spot of infiltration is in the joints.” He tapped the left shoulder, elbow, and wrist of his suit, as if you needed an illustration. “Starting from the collar, check all points of articulation for cracked seals. Apply lubricant if necessary.” Wedging his fingers into the suit’s rubber cowl, he glanced at you over the shoulder plates. “You’re not the first person to point out my behavior, you know,” he said, neither amused nor accusatory.</p><p>You resisted the urge to make a bawdy joke about the necessity of lubrication. Out of contrariness, you started from the bottom of the armor, poking at the ankle joints like you knew what you were doing. “Oh really? And here I was thinking you saved all your hatred just for me.”</p><p>“I don’t—you think I hate you?” Danse frowned briefly, then returned to his task. “Make sure the shock absorber pistons slide into their housing without any resistance.”</p><p>“The pistons are fine,” you announced. Fine enough, at least. “And yeah, I think we’ve made our mutual distaste for each other pretty obvious by now.”</p><p>“Your first impression <em>did</em> leave a lot to be desired,” he said without any apparent malice; you couldn’t really argue. “But you seem to have settled into the Brotherhood now—you fight well, follow orders, and uphold the Codex. That’s all I could ask for in a subordinate. I don’t hate you, nor do I dislike you. If anything, I’m… confused by you.”</p><p>“Confused?”</p><p>“Yes—inspect the knee joints closely; they tend to accumulate wear and tear—you confuse me. You told me you were a member of the military. But then you made it sound like you left before the onset of the Great War.”</p><p>It figured such a thing would be inconceivable to Danse. From what you had seen, all Brotherhood enlistments were lifetime commitments. They even had children aboard the Prydwen, born or recruited into the Brotherhood. They called them “squires,” and their youthful fervency was too much like Anthony’s. This was no four-year meal ticket. The Brotherhood of Steel was not a career. It was a religion, a calling, a way of life. A cult. What were you doing there?</p><p>“I did,” you replied, smothering your doubts as you smothered the suit’s knee joints in grease. “I officially retired in 2074.”</p><p>You thought you caught a flicker of a smirk on Danse’s face. “Perhaps I’m misinterpreting pre-war customs,” he said, “but you seem a little young for retirement.”</p><p>“I’m flattered,” you said dryly. “Retirement wasn’t my choice. I was injured in the field.”</p><p>“Injured? It must have been severe.”</p><p>“It…” Your hands fell to your sides, the armor inspection forgotten. “Yeah. It was. I probably could’ve returned to the service after I recovered, but they’d never let me near combat again. Too much of a risk. I’d be pushing papers instead, and I just—I couldn’t.”</p><p>Funny, your performance in the wasteland would have proved them all wrong, occasional flareups notwithstanding. Then again, lust for vengeance was a hell of a drug (and Med-X, you thought ruefully, had been a hell of a drug, too). When you came back from Alaska the final time, you had left your heart behind, frozen with the corpses of your team, and the brass knew it. You always wondered if they pitied you—if they thought they were doing you a favor by putting the only career you had ever known under the guillotine.</p><p>“You’re a soldier. I understand.” Danse continued fiddling with his suit—working the arms back and forth, removing and reattaching the O2 recycling lines, spraying parts with some kind of aerosol sealant. After a few minutes of this, he asked, tentatively, “May I ask what happened? When you were injured?”</p><p>He didn’t deserve to know, but you told him anyway. “We were on a recon operation in Alaska, about five hundred klicks northeast of Anchorage. Our mission was to investigate and potentially sabotage what we were told was a Chinese oil line. Shit went sideways; my team was captured. I escaped, but not before the enemy broke two vertebrae in my back. The Army sent out a search party after radio contact went silent. I was out in the tundra for nearly two weeks before they found me. Got airlifted to the base hospital for surgery and then back to Boston after I stabilized.”</p><p>“What happened to the rest of your team?”</p><p>“Dead.”</p><p>“God.” Danse sighed and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I doubt it’s much of a comfort, but I know how it feels to lose your brothers in arms. It’s… a wound that never heals.”</p><p>“Mm.” You didn’t want to think about all the parts of you that were still bleeding. “Pass the sealant.”</p><p>He handed it over, then asked, “How did the enemy manage to take you by surprise? I’d assume your superiors would perform air reconnaissance before putting boots on the ground, or—”</p><p>The spray can nearly slipped from your hand. “Does it matter?” you snapped. “I don’t give a shit <em>how</em> they did it—the fuckers found us and slaughtered eleven of the finest men and women I’ve ever known.” You haphazardly sprayed the sealant over a few minuscule nicks, ripped your gloves off and tossed the can back into the toolbox, then wrenched the armor’s release wheel open. If you died, you died; a little sealant and grease would do fuck all if the Glowing Sea decided to end you. “I’m not talking about this anymore.”</p><p>“Of course,” Danse said at once. “I apologize for overstepping. If you believe your power armor is adequately prepped, we can proceed to the target.”</p><p>Stepping into the suit, you let it close around you. Though you were loath to admit it, the T-60 was miles ahead of your old T-45—it was almost comfortable; you guessed the Brotherhood had tried to match it as close to your body as possible. There were no movement delays, no stiffness in the gauntlets, no feeling like <em>you</em> were hauling hundreds of pounds of metal instead of the other way around. You retrieved your helmet and rifle from the ground, beyond ready to do anything other than talk about your dead team.</p><p>But Danse wasn’t done. “You are a remarkably strong woman, Knight Gutierrez,” he said somberly, motionless beside his unopened power armor. “I want you to know that.”</p><p>You quickly put your helmet on to keep him from seeing your tears.</p>
<hr/><p>The Glowing Sea reminded you of Alaska. No sounds but the heavy footsteps of your power armor, and your breathing, the recycled air echoing rhythmically within the confines of your helmet. In the tundra, the snow swallowed the sounds of the living. In the Sea, there was nothing to swallow. It was a vacuum, like space. It was hell.</p><p>The absence of stimuli set your nerves alight—every vibration under your feet was a potential radscorpion; every shadow, a deathclaw. Each click of your Geiger counter was like an icepick to the brain. You even swore you were getting sulfurous whiffs of the glowing pools of radioactive waste, though it should have been impossible to smell anything through the suit’s rebreather. Your pulse thudded wetly in your ears.</p><p>You and Danse crept through the wasteland, following the coordinates Haylen had programmed into your heads-up displays. He took the lead, keeping you in cover as much as possible, but it was still too damn open. For all the scarred craters you could hide in or jagged tree stumps you could dart around, there were too many flat spans of ground, too many places ripe for an ambush.</p><p>You were practically grateful when a radstorm began to roll in, announcing its presence with cracks of thunder and gusts of wind that whipped grit and pebbles against your armor with a cacophony of pings. The terrain around you dissolved into a yellow-green blur.</p><p>“Visibility’s too poor! We can’t navigate in this!” Danse called over the din.</p><p>“I thought I saw a structure to the west—let’s take shelter there until the storm passes!” you yelled back, blinking as lightning made the world go white.</p><p>The structure turned out to be a parking garage, half-buried in sand, with one side door accessible on the far end. You held it open for Danse and switched your headlamp on when it slammed behind you and left you engulfed in darkness. The storm outside dulled to a muted roar.</p><p>A quick search of the place revealed nothing but a single level of rusted cars. You breathed a quiet sigh of relief, leaned against the wall, and waited for the adrenaline the Sea had dumped in your blood to dissipate.</p><p>But your peace proved short-lived. If you were agitated before, standing still only made things worse. Standing still meant you had time to think. Why the hell did you agree to do this? And so readily, too—so eager to be a good little bitch for Maxson, for an ideology you barely believed in. But the Brotherhood gave you an opportunity to do the only thing you’ve ever been good at: they gave you a war, packaged in a pretty box with a pretty bow, with clearly defined sides and a place just for you, one more unremarkable cog in their death machine. They gave you a war to fight in and promised it would be different this time, even as they sent you to fetch the same bombs that destroyed the world you used to know.</p><p>And now those bombs would kill your son.</p><p>Your power armor made a hideous scraping noise as you slid down the wall. The suit suddenly felt like a prison, too tight around your body. You heard a quiet “ding” and a warning glowed yellow across your HUD: the power armor was shifting the rebreather’s oxygen-carbon dioxide balance. You were hyperventilating.</p><p>“Are you okay?”</p><p>You looked up from where you sat on the ground to see Danse looming over you, blinding you with his headlamp. “No,” you forced out between gasps.</p><p>He rotated the lamp to the side and crouched down at an angle—half-facing you, half-facing the door—and was silent, watching through the opaque visor of his helmet while you fought to control your reeling mind and overstimulated nervous system.</p><p>“Try to breathe deeply,” he offered, after several minutes of you trying to do just that.</p><p>You weren’t sure whether you wanted to laugh or hit him. “How is your advice always so shitty?”</p><p>Ignoring the barb, he rattled on: “I’m no fan of radstorms, myself. But you’re safe from it in here. If you close your eyes and focus on the sensation of the ground under you, that might help.”</p><p>“It’s not about the damn radstorm,” you hissed; it came out of the helmet’s voice port as a breathless growl.</p><p>“Oh.” He seemed to deflate slightly. “What is it, then?”</p><p>You stared at your headlamp’s beam dancing across the concrete ceiling. “I shouldn’t be here.”</p><p>“Of course you should,” he said immediately. “Elder Maxson sees your potential—”</p><p>“That’s not what I meant,” you interrupted. “You shouldn’t be here, either. No one should. This is a goddamn suicide mission. And for what? So he can arm a <em>robot?</em>”</p><p>“Liberty Prime will be instrumental in defeating the Institute—”</p><p>“I don’t care about the fucking Institute!”</p><p>Your shout hung in the air, its reverb amplifying the already crushing headache building behind your eyes. You didn’t care. You didn’t care about the Institute or the Brotherhood or the Commonwealth. None of it mattered anymore. All of them had stolen the last pieces you'd managed to hold onto from your previous life or build in this new one: your family was gone, your heart was shattered, your very soul had been defiled. You had nothing left to give. Not to Cait, not to Danse. Not to anyone.</p><p>There was a series of clanks, and behind your closed eyelids, you saw the diffused glow of shifting light. When you opened them, Danse was sitting next to you.</p><p>“Let me just say this,” he said. “Not as your commanding officer, but as one soldier to another.” Each word felt deliberate, weighted. “We all feel doubt. There have been many moments where I questioned whether or not I was doing the right thing. Or even afterward, I’ve wondered”—he laid his rifle across his lap, muzzle pointed away from you—“could things have gone better—for my team, for me—had I made a different decision?”</p><p>Could you have saved them? If only you hadn't been so damn blind, if only you’d thought to question him more before the mission started…</p><p>Danse continued, “I’ve thought, did I push them too hard? Did I not push <em>myself</em> enough? But… this doubt, it’s like a cancer. It spreads: through yourself and then through the ranks, destabilizing the entire force.”</p><p>The wind howled against the garage walls. You thought of Anthony, his head bowed in the courtroom.</p><p>“You and I—all soldiers—need to have trust,” he said. “Trust in yourself, your superiors, and in the men and women fighting with you. Trust in the mission. That’s all that matters.”</p><p>You didn’t want Danse to trust you. You didn’t want something you were too weak, too afraid to reciprocate. “I don’t know that I have much trust left in me,” you admitted.</p><p>“Then do whatever you need to do to complete the objective. Do your duty. That’s how trust is built. We’ll get through this.”</p><p><em>Complete the objective.</em> That order carried you through the rest of the wait in the parking garage, through the final stretch of the Glowing Sea, through the bowels of Sentinel Site Prescott as you blasted through hordes of ferals. You turned off the higher functions of your brain entirely and embraced your inevitable demise, the same way you did during the ugliest parts of the war. You were a mindless harbinger of death. The perfect soldier.</p><p>And when Danse told you he was staying behind with the bombs, commanding you to return to base without him, you trusted him.</p>
<hr/><p>You arrived back at the Prydwen to find Maxson waiting for you in the viewing room, alone. He stood with his back to you, staring somewhere out the window, his hands grasping the railing in front of him. He did not turn at your approach.</p><p>Unsure of what else to do, you let old habits take over. “Sir, Knight Gutierrez reports as ordered,” you said, standing at attention.</p><p>“Knight Gutierrez.” Maxson’s own posture was rigid as a steel beam. “When exactly were you planning to inform me,” he said slowly, and an icy prickle of dread crawled down the back of your neck, “that Danse is a synth?”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Apoptosis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter contains graphic depictions of violence.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Alaska 2074</em>
</p><p>The mountains were so much <em>bigger</em> than you thought they’d be. A stupid thing to think, really; it wasn’t like you’d never seen them before. You weren’t some flatlander yokel from the Midwest Commonwealth. You’d seen both the Appalachians and the Rockies well before your tenth birthday, towering in the background of whatever base your father had shuttled you off to that year. And god knew you’d long since had your fill of the Chugach Mountains looming over the ass end of the Anchorage base. But, for whatever reason, you had never been up them, <em>in</em> them, trudging through mist-soaked valleys and scaling fir-lined peaks.</p><p>That all changed two hours ago when you fast-roped out of the vertibird and into the Alaska Range. It was early February, and the world around you was drained of color, white on gray on white. Even the sky was the color of tin, the noon sun too aloof to warm, to do anything but reflect harshly on the snow. You didn’t dare take off your polarized goggles. Operational Detachment Alpha 248 had been inserted at moderate elevation—taller peaks crowded around you, dominating the horizon as you moved ever downward, plodding through snow-covered paths you doubted any human had ever tried to walk. There was still another six hours of marching ahead of you before your team reached the target.</p><p>You stopped for a moment to catch your breath, your calves on fire from the constant descent with ninety pounds of weapons, ammo, and other supplies strapped to your back. The air was utterly still, barely warmed as it slid through the fabric covering your nose and mouth, but you sucked it into your hungry, frost-burned lungs just the same, purposely avoiding staring too long at the sheer hundred foot drop a few paces away. Instead, you looked east toward your goal—or at least where it ought to be: a flat ridge hidden among the peaks, overlooking a gap pinched into the range like the thread in a string of pearls. In that gap was a section of oil pipeline. And—you were told by HQ—the Reds.</p><p>“We’re not here for tourism, Maria,” Jaime said gruffly, his boots crunching in the snow as he approached. “C’mon.”</p><p>“I just figured I’d take in the view before I freeze my tits off,” you replied, making a show of putting one gloved hand over your brow and striking a pose like some intrepid adventurer. </p><p>To think you believed joining Special Forces would take you somewhere other than goddamned Alaska. Twenty years ago, it would have. Twenty years ago, the Army would’ve sent you off to some far-flung nation—places the boots of conventional forces would never touch—to integrate with local resistance leaders and help train their men. That was before the Pentagon decided throwing everything they had into Alaska’s meat grinder was the best course of action. Thoughts of the Philippines and Thailand got you through the most hellish parts of training, but here you were in Alaska for the fourth time in ten years. Still, you thought, glancing at the rest of your team when they rounded the bend, you didn’t have to suffer alone.</p><p>Theresa called from behind, immediately identified by the twang of her southern drawl, “What, you don’t trust these fancy West Tek uniforms to keep our tits warm and dry?”</p><p>You chuckled and fell back into place with the group. The uniforms were all right—they weren’t power armor, at least. But all the high-tech insulation in the world wouldn’t keep your toes warm when you were on a fucking mountain in snow up past your ankles.</p><p>“Aw, they’re not <em>that</em> bad,” Jack offered, unconvincingly. “Warmer than those old standard issue BDUs we used to have.” </p><p>Leave it to Chief Warrant Officer Jackson Crane to find a silver lining in the darkest of clouds. HQ had decided to split your ODA into two groups of six, sending detachment commander Captain Alice Spencer and her five subordinates to the eastern slopes of the Alaska Range, on the other side of the oil line. Which meant command of Team Two fell to Jack. Admittedly, you got along better with Alice, but Jack had the chops—eighteen years in the military, and fourteen of those as a Green Beret. He’d see you through, no doubt about it.</p><p>Jaime tugged at the straps holding the ballistic plate to his chest. “I don’t like that they’re all one piece, though. Gotta undo half a dozen zippers just to take a leak. Style over substance. I’m telling you, it’s poor design,” he declared, ever the engineer. </p><p>As the senior of ODA 248’s two engineer sergeants, Jaime was an expert in the fine arts of building things and blowing them up. He had never met a locked door or a wall he couldn’t get through, or a vehicle or suit of power armor he couldn’t fix. According to SF legend, Staff Sergeant Castillo had once detonated the side of a mountain with fertilizer, propane, and a few fusion cells, burying a whole battalion of Reds in an avalanche. You were pretty sure that was bullshit.</p><p>Rieman meandered by the cliff’s edge, close enough to make your stomach flip. “You know,” he said, “I’ve always wanted to piss off the side of a mountain. You guys think I should try it?”</p><p>Keeping well clear—of the drop down the mountain or of Rieman’s penis, should he decide to fulfill his dreams here and now—you shot back, “So the Reds can follow the yellow trail and catch you with your dick out?”</p><p>Knowing Sergeant William Rieman, he’d probably adore the attention. Most of the communications sergeants you knew were… well, they were nerds, to put it lightly. Battle-hardened, badass nerds, maybe, but still nerds—they loved their tech, loved futzing with terminals and radios, loved talking the ear off whoever was polite or stupid enough to ask about their job. Rieman, however, was the quintessential jock. He was a linebacker in high school, and he still looked the part—like he’d be perfectly comfortable in a varsity jacket, dunking a nerd’s head in the toilet. He was a foul-mouthed, obstinate shithead, and you loved him more than your own brother.</p><p>“Eat my ass, Gutierrez. You’re just jealous you can’t write your name in the snow,” he said triumphantly, waggling his pelvis around in demonstration.</p><p>You rolled your eyes behind your goggles. “I’m not eating anyone’s ass till we’re back in Anchorage. <em>Especially</em> not yours, Rieman. I’m still not convinced you know how to wipe.”</p><p>Theresa kicked a cloud of snow in Rieman’s direction, then stage-whispered, “Oh, I’ve shared a tent with him before. He <em>definitely</em> doesn’t know how to wipe. Haven’t smelled anything like that since the wards had a bout of C. diff.” </p><p>Sergeant Theresa Weatherby was one of the team’s medics and had probably smelled the worst things life or death had to offer. But even the horror of Rieman’s unwashed asshole after weeks in the field wouldn’t have phased her. As expected of her specialty, she was remarkably steady under pressure, digging out shrapnel and setting tourniquets with an ease you could only hope to have in combat.</p><p>A heavy hand dropped on your shoulder. “Children,” rumbled Master Sergeant Clayton, “that’s enough.”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” came the morose, mumbled chorus of four sufficiently chastised soldiers. </p><p>Clayton had been with 248 longer than anyone, even Jack. He reminded you of your father—the consummate professional, a stabilizing force, a shelter through the harshest storms. Clayton preferred action to words, but you never found yourself wanting when it came to his approval or guidance. A part of you hoped to fill his shoes in another decade: a grizzled MSG keeping the young bucks in line, advising the officers as the senior enlisted woman. Another, quieter part of you wondered if that was your father’s dream, not yours.</p><p>The FM radio nestled into Rieman’s pack crackled to life. “Team Two, this is Team One,” came Captain Alice’s voice, edged with interference fuzz. “Radio check. Over.”</p><p>Rieman slung the pack off his shoulders and hunched over the radio, fiddling with dials and buttons to clean the signal. “Team One, this is Team Two,” he replied into the headset receiver. “You’re good and readable. Over.” Releasing the push-to-talk button, he turned to the rest of you and said, “Nobody breathe. God knows that’s all it’d take to fuck up the signal.”</p><p>The mountainous terrain impeded commo more than you’d like. Though the FM broadcast between the teams wasn’t affected much, any contact with Anchorage would require the use of satellite communication, which meant your team was in the dark unless Rieman could find a suitable place to set up the SATCOM antenna. It should have made you nervous, but you just felt the welcome buzz of adrenaline, hot and metallic on the back of your tongue. There was no room for doubt. There was only your mission, and the grim comfort of a binary outcome: success or death. This was what you had trained for.</p><p>“We’re ten-point-five miles out from the target, ETA 1710. Over,” Alice said.</p><p>“They’re almost an hour ahead of us!” Jaime groaned.</p><p>Theresa was already tightening her bootlaces in preparation. “Either Alice is really cracking the whip,” she said, “or Rieman’s fat ass is slowing us down. And she don’t sound too tired, just saying.”</p><p>“Fuck off,” Rieman grunted. “You guys must really love my ass, seeing as how you can’t stop talking about it.” He pressed the talk button. “We’re thirteen miles out, ETA 1800. We’ll pick up the pace. Over.”</p><p>You could practically hear Alice grinning through the tinny distortion. “Roger that,” she said. “Better get moving. Out.”</p><p>“You heard the commander,” Jack said. “Now, it’s been a while since I took a math class, but by my calculations, I think we need to be a hell of a lot closer to twenty minute miles than what we’ve been doing if we’re gonna catch up to the other team.” He paused just long enough for dread to set in. “Buckle up, boys and girls. We’re marching hard.”</p><p>Flexing out the stiffness in your neck and back, you mentally and physically steeled yourself to start hauling ass. Hopefully West Tek had installed some sweat-wicking technology in these damn uniforms. “Embrace the suck!” you bellowed, full of mock-cheer, and the other members of your team echoed the words like a liturgy.</p><p>You moved through the mountains, six gray and white ghosts—identical to outside observers, but you could distinguish any of them in your sleep: Jaime, the tallest, always fidgeting with his rucksack; Theresa, slighter of build than the men, flitting between everyone like a curious hummingbird; Rieman, his back wide as a barn door, stomping through the snow with a vengeance; Clayton, effortlessly maintaining the breakneck pace, almost able to hide the limp he still carried from an old gunshot wound; and Jack at the lead, constantly checking his watch and compass, undoubtedly wearing a smile beneath his balaclava.</p>
<hr/><p>Three hours later, the radio sounded again. “Team Two, this is Team One. Do you read me? Over,” said the voice on the other end, pitched low and slow with a forced calm, nearly drowned out by noises—sharp cracks and pops, something more than standard interference, but you couldn’t tell exactly what with such a short transmission.</p><p>“That sounded like Sharon,” Rieman said. Staff Sergeant Sharon Langstraat was Rieman’s counterpart, the senior commo sergeant, and she wasn’t supposed to be in charge of check-ins. Rieman yanked the headset to his ear. “Team One, this is Team Two. We read you. Over.”</p><p>“Team One, this is 18-Echo. Requesting backup,” Sharon said, and <em>then</em> you identified it: gunfire, interspersed with the muted blasts of laser rifles. “I’m pinned down. Must be sixty to eighty Reds out here, on all sides. Can’t get to open air to set up the SATCOM. Over.”</p><p>“Shit,” Rieman hissed, off-comm. The rest of the team had stopped, clustering around the radio, their expressions invisible behind masks and goggles, but tension radiated from their bodies. “Relay your coordinates,” Rieman requested. “Over.”</p><p>For a small eternity, there was no sound but the wind against your helmet, no feeling but that of your nerves shredding to pieces. Your back was soaked in sweat, your toes and fingertips frozen into useless stumps, and all you could do was stand and wait while half your team battled for their lives on the other side of the mountain range.</p><p>When Sharon finally came back on the comm, the six of you let out a simultaneous breath of relief. She relayed the coordinates, repeating them twice more as bullets zinged by and hit dirt around her, coming through the radio receiver as garbled whistles and clunks. There was no “over” when she finished the message. Rieman’s finger trembled where it hovered over the talk button.</p><p>The possibility of attack wasn’t nonzero. You all knew it from the briefing in Anchorage before you set out. But you had the high ground; that was the whole damn point of inserting into the mountains. How had the enemy been able to flank them?</p><p>Sharon’s voice returned, soap-bubble fragile. “Foxtrot and Delta are down. Over.”</p><p>Diane Anderson and Jacob Nowak. The mountain felt like it was crumbling beneath your feet, like it would swallow you whole. You stared to the east, where Diane and Jacob lay dying, and prayed.</p><p>“Team One, this is Team Two.” Rieman sounded calm, but you knew him. He was using every ounce of energy to keep from screaming. “I’ll transmit your coordinates. Hold on and give ‘em hell. Over.”</p><p>“Roger that. Out.”</p><p>Rieman ripped the SATCOM and its collapsed antenna from his pack and immediately began setting it up in the snow. “Never gonna get a signal in this fucking place,” he growled, even as he fanned out the antenna’s director poles. “And someone keep an eye on the damn FM!”</p><p>You were in a small depression within the mountains, surrounded by a prison of rock. Rieman had tried periodically to get a comm line to HQ throughout the mission without success. Only a miracle would get that signal through now.</p><p>You could do nothing but ready your rifle and keep lookout, something to push back against the avalanche of helplessness threatening to bury you. The rest of your team followed suit, silently guarding Rieman while he worked and swore. You had your orders. <em>If either team is attacked en route to the target</em>, Alice had said in the command room, <em>get to open air, get the coordinates to HQ, and sit tight for backup and evac</em>. If you couldn’t get a signal here, you would find somewhere you could. There were no other options.</p><p>The minutes ticked by. You crouched by the FM radio, willing it to come alive, to hear Sharon’s voice again, but there was only dead air on the other end, and you didn’t dare take her attention away from the fight by placing a call yourself. Rieman trotted around with the SATCOM, perching the antenna at various spots along the path, making the same requests to HQ and receiving silence in response. Eventually, he returned to the group, balaclava tugged down, goggles atop his head. Perspiration covered his face; droplets of it shone in his beard. His eyes were wild with fear and frustration.</p><p>“We have to get back up the mountain,” he demanded. “I need better elevation to get this fucking signal through.”</p><p>“Then let’s go,” Clayton said, but Jack shook his head.</p><p>“We need to move forward,” he said. “We can’t go back the way we came.”</p><p>Rieman’s eyes narrowed, his pupils two pinpricks in a gray-blue sea. “If we move forward, we move down. If we move down, I’m sure as shit not getting a signal.”</p><p>Something twisted in your gut. A small, unignorable tug.</p><p>Jack took a step closer to Rieman. “We will continue to the target. That’s an order, Sergeant.”</p><p>You frowned. Jack was a considerate leader, always respecting the opinions of his subordinates—it wasn’t like him to pull rank. You couldn't make sense of any of it.</p><p>“Jack,” Clayton cut in, sharp with an undercurrent of warning, “you heard Alice during the mission briefing. We need to find open air, and the most likely spot is behind us, not ahead.”</p><p>All of Jack’s usual amiability was gone, replaced with a cold, hard impatience. “He’s been trying and failing all afternoon to get a sat-comm out.” He did not look in Clayton or Rieman’s direction when he spoke. “Besides, we don’t know if the Reds are tracking us. If we turn back, we might be walking into a trap, same as Team One.”</p><p>“How do you know that’s what happened?” Clayton asked quietly, and the tug in your gut became a yank.</p><p>“I don’t,” Jack said, too quickly. “But what I <em>do</em> know is the more time we spend here, the worse off Team One will be.”</p><p>Jaime and Theresa stood off to the side, watching the conversation in uneasy silence. When Theresa looked at you, you could only look back at her, a masked, camouflaged reflection.</p><p>“Do you think the Reds are behind us?” Rieman asked. He had put the SATCOM back in his rucksack, freeing his hands to clench into fists. </p><p>“It’s always a possibility. We all know that,” Jack remarked, shrugging, but the gesture felt off, more like a jerk of the shoulders.</p><p>The breath seized in your chest, and your gaze traveled across the ridges, south to west to north, searching for movement among the rocks, the mountain itself now another enemy.</p><p>“Let me rephrase Sergeant Rieman’s words,” Clayton said, and as the question left his mouth, the world stopped turning: “Do you <em>know</em> the Reds are behind us, Jack?”</p><p>“I—” Jack’s soul seemed to flee his body. He dropped his head, speaking so softly you could barely hear him. “They are behind us. And waiting up ahead. But they won’t fire if they see me with you.”</p><p>Time slowed to a horrid crawl. “You traitorous son of a bitch!” Clayton snarled, and he reached for his rifle, but Jack’s own AER12 was already in his hands, and you saw the blinding flash in the center of the muzzle before you could cry out, before you could do anything to stop this wretched madness.</p><p>Time exploded forward again in a nauseating lurch. Clayton took a flurry of laser rounds to the abdomen and one to the neck. He collapsed, clutching at the charred remains of his throat, and Jack had enough time for one more blast to the head just as Rieman unloaded an entire fusion cell’s worth of shots into the assistant commander’s body, screaming with pure, unbridled rage.</p><p>Jack fell, and a strangled wail bubbled up from your chest, a gasp of inchoate grief and desperation. Theresa was there in a heartbeat, pulling supplies—stimpacks and skin closure patches, shears and pressure dressings—from the kit on her belt, unzipping Clayton’s suit to bare the steaming, gaping holes in his gut to the frozen air as the snow turned red beneath him.</p><p>“We need to get a bird here for evac!” she said, and it took too long for you to realize she was talking to you. You, Sergeant Gutierrez, 18-Bravo, the next link in the chain of command with Jack and Clayton incapacitated.</p><p>It was only then that the totality hit you. Jack was a spy; a Communist agent who had sold you out to the Reds. Clayton was likely dead or soon on his way, along with Alice and her team on the eastern slopes. The enemy knew your position, and they were coming, and they would kill you. The surety of your destruction broke something in you, shoved you past a point of no return. The space where fear had resided was suddenly filled with a perverse calm. </p><p>“Rieman!” you shouted. You had to repeat his name twice more before he acknowledged you—he was transfixed by Jack’s smoking corpse, his rifle still pointed at it as though it might yet rise. But he left it alone after your third yell, shuffling over to you like a criminal bound for death row.</p><p>“Jaime, you get over here, too,” you commanded, and he obeyed. Theresa remained kneeling in the snow, Clayton’s blood streaming through her gloved fingers as she applied pressure to his neck, but she tilted her chin up to look at you. You called on the spirit of Master Sergeant Walter Clayton, of your father, of all the men and women who had guided you, who were so much more than you would ever be. “I won’t lie,” you said to the three of them, “we’re royally fucked. But we’re not going down without fucking them back just as hard, understand? Rieman,”—he nodded, sober and focused—“get back up the mountain. If there is anywhere on this godforsaken range where you can get a signal to HQ, find it and do it. That is your only priority. Do not engage the enemy unless you have to. Jaime, Theresa, and I will stay here with Clayton until help arrives. I’ll keep trying to hail Team One. Regardless of what happens, we do <em>not</em> surrender, you hear me? We <em>fight</em>. To our last breaths.”</p><p>“Roger that, ma’am,” they said together.</p><p>You glanced at each of them in turn, witnessed the moment they accepted their own fates—their own deaths—and you had never felt such pride, such <em>love</em>.</p><p>Rieman left with the SATCOM soon after, heading west, following the footprints you had left behind, while Jaime helped you drag Clayton and what remained of Jack to cover. It was more for the benefit of firing from protection; any chance at secrecy was blown with a blood trail that large leading right to your hiding spot. You couldn’t tell if Clayton was breathing. You chose not to find out.</p><p>The FM radio was still on the same frequency. You pressed the frigid plastic headset to your ear and pushed the talk button. “Team One, this is 18-Bravo. I’ve got two men down. Enemy inbound. Over.” You released the button and waited. Nothing. “Team One, do you read me? I repeat, <em>man down</em>. Over.”</p><p>You crouched there on the ground, shivering as melted snow seeped into your boots, and you called, and you called, until the Chinese soldiers appeared on the horizon, twilit gloom reflecting off a hundred helmets.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>Listening Post Bravo, Commonwealth 2288</em>
</p><p>Your bullet pierced the shield covering the turret’s optic sensor; it popped with a shower of sparks, disabled. You scanned the concrete ceiling for more, peering between water and ventilation pipes, in corners and doorways. Nothing. You smiled mirthlessly. Only one turret and two protectrons, now cracked open like plastic eggs in the middle of the room. The synth must not have had time to muster more defenses when it escaped here.</p><p>It certainly wasn’t the first being to occupy this bunker—the place was littered with centuries-old garbage, toppled shelving units, and the odd skeleton. The skeletons used to disturb you when you first arrived here. You were no stranger to dead bodies, but the finality of decay—of knowing crumbling bones were all that was left of the people from your time—was something else entirely. But Cait and the others ignored them, maybe grumbled when their foot got caught in a broken ribcage, and eventually you learned to do the same.</p><p>You kicked one out of the way, sending a mandible skittering across the floor. No point in stealth now. It knew you were coming.</p><p>A hole blasted into the wall was the only way forward. You stepped into it, rifle drawn and at the ready. Water sloshed around your boots, and the smell of mold and rust was overwhelming. Creeping forward, you let the dim emergency lighting of the listening post guide you to your target.</p><p>You rounded a corner, and there was Danse.</p><p>He—<em>it</em>, your mind demanded, but you could no longer reconcile the distinction—turned. You saw this through your scope, the center of the reticle on the back of his head, then between his eyes. You should have pulled the trigger, finished the mission. You didn’t.</p><p>Though Danse appeared unarmed and unarmored, you couldn’t be sure. “Don’t move,” you ordered. Keeping your muzzle trained on him, you began to check the room. It would have been easier with another person, but you came alone. This was your task, your failure you needed to amend.</p><p>“There’s a pistol in the desk. My rifle is in the trunk behind me,” he said, keeping his head facing straight and his hands open.</p><p>You confiscated both, popping the ammo out and tossing the guns into the passage behind you. You found no other weapons or traps during your search. Briefly, you wondered if synths had a self-destruct button—what if the Institute had installed a bomb in Danse’s body, and all he needed to do was flip a switch or say a codeword to blow you both to pieces?</p><p>You mentally shrugged. No point in caring. If anything, mutual destruction would solve all of your problems.</p><p>With the situation secured, or as much as it could be, you took a moment to study the man—no, the synth—in front of you. He was more disheveled than you had ever seen him: splotches of dirt caked his uniform, and the thinner fabric at his waist and inner arms was lined with a white crust where sweat had soaked through and dried. A section of cloth on his forearm had been ripped away, revealing bruised skin and a fresh wound, partially-scabbed and weeping.</p><p>Had he disposed of his power armor somewhere between here and the Glowing Sea? Going without would have made him harder to track. A coward, then—hiding like a rat in this bunker instead of facing justice. Wouldn’t even go down fighting. A mix of disgust and secondhand shame washed over you. How little you truly knew Paladin Danse.</p><p>You were surprised he could bring himself to meet your gaze. But he did, eyes blurry with exhaustion boring into your own. And there was that emptiness, that haunted core you once thought you had in common. Now you knew: they were not a killer’s eyes. Only the soulless eyes of a synth.</p><p>“Maxson sent you,” he said. A statement, not a question. You supposed it wasn’t a hard guess to make.</p><p>“He did.” It hadn’t taken much to convince Maxson of your innocence; the naked hurt Danse’s betrayal evoked in you was enough. It was likely the most honest emotion you had ever displayed to the Brotherhood’s leader.</p><p>Danse nodded once, calmly. “He should do it himself, but if anyone else has to… in a way, I’m glad it’s you.”</p><p><em>I’m glad it’s you.</em> How lovely for him, to be granted his final wish. And how lovely for Maxson that you were so conveniently available. Any Brotherhood brownnoser could’ve done it. Any idiot with a gun. But it had to be you.</p><p>Before he died, you wanted to hear it. For the third time since you woke up from the cryopod—for the last time—you asked: “Are you a synth?”</p><p>“Yes.” So easy for him to say, like he had been waiting his entire manufactured existence to admit it.</p><p>So there it was. The undeniable truth. Not that you needed his confirmation to fulfill your directive, but now you had it, straight from the synth’s mouth. Your conscience would be clean, should it decide to interfere. Your rifle had dipped toward the floor, though, and when you looked within yourself for anger, diving deep for that reliable spark, you returned to the surface with only a handful of ashes.</p><p>“Why?” The pain leaked in before you could stop it, stripping the word to something raw and plaintive.</p><p>He blinked. “If you’re asking why the Institute made me, I have no idea. I’ve never—”</p><p>“No, why did you <em>lie</em> to me?” you blurted. Naive, foolish; like a child. But you never had the chance to ask, that day in the mountains.</p><p>“Knight Gutierrez, I have never lied to you,” Danse said, with so much conviction you almost believed him.</p><p>“So you just conveniently left out the part where you were a synth this entire time, is that it?”</p><p>“I didn’t know,” he insisted. “Not until I intercepted Brotherhood communications while waiting for pickup at the bomb storage facility. They were coming to”—he moved his hands and your trigger finger flinched, but he merely clasped them together—“do what you’re here to do, I suppose.”</p><p>“And you ran.”</p><p>“I did. And I’m not proud of it. But I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t want to believe that I wasn’t—” He trailed off, rubbing the pad of his thumb over his knuckles. “That I wasn’t human. But it wasn’t a mistake. Their intel was sound; I confirmed it.”</p><p>“How did you—” you started to ask, then stopped. Who else could it be? “Haylen.”</p><p>“Yes,” Danse said. “Squad Gladius has a secure communications channel. I logged into it from a terminal and saw Haylen’s message with the proof Proctor Quinlan’s team had decoded.” He sighed. “She risked too much just to tell me.”</p><p>You couldn’t parse it. You didn’t <em>want</em> to parse it. Traitors, spies, humans, synths… you were so fucking sick of it all. “Maxson ordered me to kill you.”</p><p>His expression was one of peaceful resignation. “Of course. It would go against every facet of the Brotherhood’s ethos to let me live.”</p><p>“Your ethos doesn’t mean shit to me. I’m just doing my job.”</p><p>“As you should.”</p><p>And still your rifle remained pointed at the floor. “Do you know how the Institute makes synths?” you asked, grasping for something to light the fuse and lift your damn hands.</p><p>Danse’s brow furrowed. “If you mean synths like—like me, then no, I don’t. I imagine it’s a very complex process.”</p><p>“It is. They tried for decades, kidnapping people and mutating them using a modified strain of FEV”—his face blanched—“but it didn’t work. They couldn’t overcome the DNA damage from all the radiation. They needed untainted genetic material. <em>Pre-war</em> genetic material.”</p><p>You waited for him to understand, to be struck by the same horrible realization that struck you in Shaun’s immaculate, lifeless Institute bedroom. After a few moments, his eyes widened, but he said nothing.</p><p>It didn’t matter. You kept going. “They—the Institute—they stole my son, they killed my husband… so they could make you.” Hatred slithered up your throat, making your voice shake. “They took everything from me—<em>everything</em>. For the sake of your kind. For synths.”</p><p>The bastard held his hands out, head slightly bowed, as though in sympathy. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “What they did can never be justified.”</p><p>“No, it can’t,” you spat. “I would let a million synths die—god, I’d kill them all myself—if it meant I could have my baby in my arms again.”</p><p>But nothing would bring him back to you. There was a void where your love for him used to live, ripped out of you by the man he became. Too many voids, too many wounds left open to fester. You would never heal.</p><p>“I wish my death could give you back what you’ve lost,” Danse said. “I can only hope knowing there’s one less synth in the world will offer you some semblance of comfort.”</p><p>“Don’t flatter yourself. Killing you won’t bring me comfort.” You wrestled your breathing back into a steady rhythm, if only to suit your sentiment: “It won’t make me happy, or sad, or anything else. I’m following orders. They don’t require me to feel a fucking thing.”</p><p>The ire breezed past him. “That’s true,” he acknowledged. “They don’t. I have always found that reassuring.”</p><p>So did you. So much of your life had revolved around furious attempts to strangle your emotions—you smothered them with apathy, with Med-X and alcohol, with obedience, letting your humanity atrophy to the point where the threat of simply <em>feeling</em> was more than you could bear. To feel for something was to give it significance, and if something had significance, it had value, and it could be taken from you. If some<em>one</em> had significance—</p><p>“Do you want to die?” you asked. Somewhere in the background static of your mind, you wondered why you needed to know the answer.</p><p>“What I want is irrelevant. My existence is anathema to everything I have striven to uphold.” His next words came slowly, in the sort of carefully planned cadence you’d grown to expect. “It is not that I want to die. It is that I cannot be allowed to live.”</p><p>The rifle smacked against your thigh as you let it fall from your hands, dangling at the end of its sling. You pulled Kellogg’s revolver from its holster and cocked the hammer back. When you looked up again, Danse was on his knees, back straight, chin high.</p><p>“I’m proud of you,” he said. You had no reply.</p><p>You stepped closer and wrapped both hands around the pistol’s grip, raising the barrel until the front sights aligned with Danse’s forehead, framing the crease between his brows. Your arms remained tensed but not locked, your legs slightly spread, feet braced against the floor—the .44 packed a kick, and you’d need to account for it if your shot was to remain clean and true.</p><p>Danse watched as you aimed. You searched his face for hatred, for fear, for regret. All you found was trust. Perfect, human trust.</p><p>On your next inhale, you placed your index finger on the trigger.</p><p>When did you first learn about synths? In the space of a single breath, you remember it all: the warehouse of bombs standing vigil in the Glowing Sea; the fight with Cait, the look she gave you before slamming the door behind her; Shaun showing you the Institute, full of miracles produced from your chromosomes; Maxson and Kells, pale imitations of men from your past; Kellogg’s sneer in Fort Hagen’s command room; Danse burying his fellow soldier in an unmarked grave at the side of the highway; Valentine’s plastic skin and glowing eyes; that issue of <em>Publick Occurrences</em> on the bench in Diamond City.</p><p>And you remember Jackson Crane. You remember the eleven deaths he forced you to carry within your heart that February day in Alaska. Always, until you become number twelve.</p><p>You exhale. And you fire.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Got some wonderful heartbreaking art from <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/elavellan/pseuds/tanaleth">tanaleth</a>!</p><p> </p><p>  </p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Efferocytosis</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Maxson is not alone when you enter the Prydwen’s viewing room. To your great displeasure, Kells stands beside him, speaking to the Elder in hushed tones. They stop their chat when they notice you walking in.</p><p>“Elder Maxson, Captain Kells,” you say, nodding at each man and drawing your weary, aching body to attention. “Knight Gutierrez reports, sirs.”</p><p>Maxson eyes you like a viper preparing to strike. “Is it done?” he asks, all pretense of formal process evaporated.</p><p>You hold a set of holotags out—the ones you pulled from Danse’s neck when you were sure he was dead. Hopefully they’re adequate proof; Maxson seemed too consumed by rage to detail the mission parameters beyond “kill him.” If he wants to see real evidence, he’ll need to visit Listening Post Bravo himself. Somehow you doubt he would make the effort.</p><p>He snatches them from you and inspects the engraving, Kells surreptitiously peering over his shoulder to do the same. Within moments, Maxson’s expression flips from suspicion to utter delight. Even Kells manages a strained smile in your direction. You feel ill.</p><p>“The traitor is dead!” Maxson crows, beaming at you like a proud parent. “Well done! I knew my faith in you was not misplaced.”</p><p>“The body is still in the bunker, sir. I inactivated the defenses, so retrieval shouldn’t pose a problem,” you explain, but it’s for naught.</p><p>He scoffs, and it quickly morphs into a condescending chuckle. “Let it rot there. Assuming it’s even capable of that.”</p><p>You stifle a cringe. Even Jack’s remains were found and shipped home. Lieutenant Colonel Hayward was the one to tell you, not long after you woke up from surgery. Typical of her frank, solemn nature, she spared no detail, explaining everything while you struggled to piece it together through a heavy fog of painkillers and tranquilizers. By the time Anchorage heard Rieman’s distress signal and sent out a fleet of vertibirds to the mountain range, there were no living soldiers left among the piles of dead. They found Rieman clutching the SATCOM at the top of a high ridge, cold and rigor mortis locking the radio into his hands. As ordered, he never engaged the enemy. Jack and Clayton were next, surrounded by three dozen Red corpses. Then Team One—they, at the very least, had the comfort of dying together.</p><p>Jaime and Theresa wouldn’t be discovered for another day. The Reds had hoped to take the three of you hostage, but Jaime’s wounds were too severe and Theresa put up more of a fight than they anticipated. Their bodies were left in the basement of the oil pumping station while you—unconscious since the shootout in the mountains—were apparently moved to another location. What happened after is only ever remembered in fragments of your nightmares: the smell of burnt oil; angry words in a language you don’t understand; the scratch of burlap on your face; frozen concrete against your stomach and chest. The faint hiss of hydraulics as the leg of a stolen T-45 is lifted; the supernova of pain when its boot slams into your lower back.</p><p>You asked Colonel Hayward about Jack, tongue thick and brain swimming, still unable to integrate the man he was with the monster he turned out to be. She shook her head and said his family would receive his remains after the Army concluded its investigation. The brass meant to keep a lid on his betrayal, she told you, with the expectation that you would do the same—the United States had been at war too long to let news of a traitor in the ranks reach the public’s ear. But there was no joy when she confirmed his death, only a profound sadness.</p><p>Maxson quickly passes the holotags back to you, like they’ll burn his hand if he holds them any longer. “Keep them,” he says. “As a trophy.” You tuck them into your pocket, where they weigh a thousand tons. “But you deserve much more than that, of course. The traitor’s quarters and personal belongings are yours, including its power armor—whenever our search team recovers it,” he mutters in irritation, as if it’s a terrible inconvenience Danse handed him personally.</p><p>“To the victor go the spoils,” Kells says with half a smirk, and you want to splatter him across the viewing room windows.</p><p>“Let it never be said that I do not reward loyal soldiers,” Maxson says. Your skin crawls at the idea of any further “rewards” he could offer. “For your dedicated service in upholding the ideals of the Brotherhood of Steel, it is my honor and pleasure to promote you to the rank of Paladin.”</p><p>It means nothing, even less than “Knight” did. With Danse dead, they need a body to fill his place in the hierarchy, and here you are. The most convenient option.</p><p>But you say, “Thank you, sir.”</p><p>Like all of Maxson’s gifts, it’s tethered to a warning: “I expect you will treat this title with more respect than your predecessor.”</p><p>“I have no intention of betraying the Brotherhood.” It comes out more acerbic than you intend, but Maxson seems to take it in stride, like your anger and his are still one and the same. </p><p>“Good. Now, with that settled, I believe Captain Kells has orders for you.”</p><p>Maxson steps away to stare out the windows. You can’t imagine what he can possibly see out there—the sun’s almost set, and fog started to roll in just as you arrived, blanketing Boston in white clouds so thick they clung to your lungs while you waited for security to check you into the airport. Probably just admiring his own reflection.</p><p>Kells doesn’t bother congratulating you, which leaves you feeling—oddly and uncomfortably—grateful. “Are you familiar with an organization known as the Railroad?” he asks, his tone suggesting you damn well should be.</p><p>You rack your brain, remembering little more than fliers tucked under bottles of booze and mouths snapping shut when you entered the room. “The name’s come up a few times here and there, but I haven’t looked into it,” you admit.</p><p>“Not surprising. They’re guerrillas. They go to ground at the first sign of trouble, and our attempts to flush them out of their holes have been unsuccessful.”</p><p>“Guerrillas? Are they resisting the Brotherhood?”</p><p>His mouth twitches toward a smile again before surrendering back into a frown. “They wouldn’t be stupid enough to try. Our <em>ideals</em> are what the Railroad resists.” The frown becomes a sneer. “Apparently, they believe in ‘liberating’ synths from the Institute. And worse, our intel reports they have the capabilities to do so, if they haven’t already.”</p><p>“That’s not possible,” you say—a poor choice, given the increasing irritation brewing on Kells’s face. “They’d have to mindwipe them, and there’s no way the Institute would let that technology—”</p><p>“That’s beside the point,” Kells snaps. “It doesn’t matter who programs the damn things. They can’t be allowed to exist, period. They need to be destroyed, and any human aiding them deserves the same fate.”</p><p>You bite your tongue. “Understood.”</p><p>“Our scribes have tracked the Railroad to their nest. Which means”—his expression reeks of derision and jealousy—”you get to be the exterminator.”</p><p>“Alone?”</p><p>“No. You’re a Paladin now,” he says, spitting your new title like a bite of rotten food, “which comes with added responsibilities. Within the next twenty-four hours, you will assemble a small team—half a dozen at most; you’ll need to maintain speed and the element of surprise. Meet with Proctor Quinlan to retrieve the intelligence reports and design a plan of attack. Within the next forty-eight hours, you will lead your squadron in a covert strike against the Railroad.” His gaze, then his words, chill you to your marrow: “Remember, the Brotherhood of Steel doesn’t take prisoners. <em>Every</em> target must be eliminated.”</p><p>Your knees turn to jelly, but fury’s steel grip holds you upright. So you are the Brotherhood’s new executioner. And why not? You did so well the first time. Even when all-too-human hurt marched you into Listening Post Bravo, it was your robotic commitment to duty that sent the bullet through Danse’s skull. Maxson couldn’t have asked for a more perfect servant, a more perfect example of their goddamn <em>ideals</em>.</p><p>And to top it off, Kells would have you lead a team. Like you are an example worth following. Like you ever were.</p><p>Acquiescence catches in your throat. “I—”</p><p>“Do <em>not</em> make me repeat myself, Paladin,” Kells growls through clenched teeth.</p><p>Clarity dawns suddenly, bright and cruel, and as the words leave your lips, you know it will be the last time you ever say them.</p><p>“Yes, sir.”</p><p>“Then get to it,” he demands. “You might have impressed Elder Maxson, but you’ve got a long way to go before you impress me. Complete this mission properly, and you might get a little closer. Dismissed.”</p><p>Leaving Kells and Maxson in the viewing room, you climb the ladder to the barracks and head straight for the showers. God knows you need one. You pass other soldiers along the way, and they grin at you like one of their own.</p><p>“Congratulations, Paladin,” they say. Some of them even salute. Word of your promotion has apparently spread fast, along with exactly how you earned it.</p><p>“Can’t believe Danse was a synth,” a woman outside the mess hall mutters, but her concern gets glossed over immediately when she sees you. “Oh! Maria! Nice work putting down the traitor!” she hoots, clapping you on the back before you can flinch away. You have no idea who she is or how she knows your name.</p><p>You brush her off, thankful for the privacy of the shower stalls as you duck into one and close the curtain behind you. The unwelcome sense of camaraderie that sneaked up on you during your first visit to the Prydwen is nowhere to be found. How the hell did you ever think you had anything in common with these people?</p><p>Turning a lever causes water to gush from the makeshift spout onto your body. You’ve never figured out how they get water to the Prydwen. Maybe the engineers pull it from the ocean for desalination and then store it all in tanks somewhere. It’s never quite warm enough, and the soap seems better suited to scrubbing floors than skin, but it’s miles better than any other method of bathing available in the modern Commonwealth… or the tundra. Nate always used to get so mad whenever you took extravagantly long showers after you bought that place in Sanctuary Hills.<em> I’ve suffered through a decade of group showers and whore baths out in the field. I think I’m allowed to waste a little water,</em> you told him.</p><p>And now you’d do unspeakable things just to shit in a functioning toilet.</p><p>The water trickles to a halt; you dry yourself off and pull a fresh set of clothes from your pack. It’s only then that you realize how exhausted you are. When did you last sleep? You can’t recall. The hours (the days?) since the vertibird ride to the Glowing Sea blur together in your mind, a feverish amalgam of pain and fear and grief. Your feet drag, scraping and thudding on the aluminum flooring. You pass Danse’s room—your room, now. You don’t look at it. Instead, you shuffle to the berths where your old bed is and collapse onto it, too worn out to take off your boots or pull the blankets out from under you.</p><p>Your eyes close, and you try to focus on the murmur of the Prydwen’s stabilizer thrusters, on the quiet, rhythmic snores of the other soldiers, on anything that could drown out your thoughts.</p><p>It doesn’t work.</p><p>You try harder, burying your head under the pillow and willing your eyes to stay shut. A stupid idea, <em>trying</em> to sleep, but you’ve never been very good at doing things the intelligent way.</p><p>Unsurprisingly, that doesn’t work either. Thoughts—not even fully-formed, just disjointed words and shards of ugly feelings—ricochet around your skull, shoring up a barricade against the rising tide of fatigue.</p><p>With a frustrated snarl, you throw yourself out of bed and stumble out of the barracks, onto the flight deck, into a vertibird, and down to the airport.</p><p>The beach is dark under the evening sky, its sand almost black. The earlier fog has cleared, and the water stretches into an endless void, studded with glimmering pieces of moonlight that reform every time the waves dash them against the shore. The tide is low, and when you turn your Pip-Boy’s light on to check for broken glass or other hazards before you have a seat, you can see a scattering of remains—bones and rotting carcasses and whatever else the ocean has spat up—lining the wet, uncovered tract of beach in front of you. The smell of it cuts into the salty brine, a vile undercurrent of modern decay mixing with the nostalgic odor of childhood vacations. Your only company is a hulking, rusted wreck of a dinghy jutting out of the sand. A chilly breeze raises goosebumps across your neck. You zip your jacket up and sit, arms wrapped around your legs, chin resting on your knees, and listen to the waves.</p><p>After countless minutes, you stretch, wincing as the old wound in your back revolts against the sudden movement, and Danse’s holotags fall out of your pocket with a gentle metallic tinkle. You pick them up, their fluorescent inset glowing blue against your palm. You can barely make out the name etched above his registration code. The—you hunt for the right word; “man” or “person” seem incorrect—<em>individual</em> and the collective. “M. Danse.” And “DN-407P.” Though neither of those are real, are they? The closest thing he has—<em>had</em>—to a name is an Institute serial number, logged with dozens of others in a Synth Retention Bureau terminal.</p><p>Thinking about Danse is too uncomfortable, so you think about yourself instead, about your own tags nestled inside your shirt, warmed by your skin. You think about your life after retirement, those too-short years before the bombs. It feels so far away now, as far away as the land on the other side of the ocean. You remember limping home after your medals ceremony, blinking away the spotty after-effects of camera flashbulbs, wanting only quiet. The Army let you go—no, <em>abandoned</em> you; surely you can admit that by now—and you had… nothing. Not literally nothing; you had Nate, your pension, and a decade of memories, but you had no purpose. No orders to follow, no shoes to fill, no cause to fight for. It was the first time you had complete autonomy, and it was fucking terrifying.</p><p>No one ever taught you how to transition to civilian life. Your entire existence had been spent in the clutches of the military, where everyone had a place and everything had an established protocol. Where people said what they meant instead of pussyfooting around the point with euphemisms and smalltalk. Even choosing what to eat was a new ordeal; you often defaulted to whatever boxed shit BlamCo had on the shelves that month. You had no idea how to think, or act, or even feel. That controlled rage Sergeant Baker had so painstakingly pulled out of you had no place off the battlefield, and for years, you felt nothing powerful enough to take its place.</p><p>They plucked you straight from combat and dumped you in a hospital bed, then you dumped yourself into Sanctuary Hills, your physical wounds healed but the emotional ones still terribly raw and open. You grieved for your team, for your old life and body. You couldn’t bear to be alone, afraid of every shadow and footstep. For the first few months, whenever Nate left for work, you secluded yourself in the bedroom with the door locked, near-catatonic from pain and lack of sleep, Sharon’s last words over the radio buzzing in your ear, Clayton’s blood-filled eyes burned into your retinas. It didn’t take long for extra doses of Med-X and alcohol to become overwhelmingly appealing.</p><p>Nate suggested you join a veteran’s organization. He was right, of course, like always, but you never did. Your weakness shamed you—you couldn’t let them see how incompetent you were, how much you were failing at simply <em>existing</em>. So you struggled alone.</p><p>You look at the tags in your hand and wonder if Danse would’ve struggled, too, without the Brotherhood of Steel to guide him. But you shake your head and let the pointless hypothetical dissipate—if not you, then someone else would have been all too eager to finish the job. Danse never would’ve had the chance to learn the bitter taste of freedom.</p><p>The waves wash in and out, and more stars coat the sky with each passing minute. The ocean provides the only sound and, absurdly, you find yourself missing seagulls. The birds of the future are ragged things covered in weeping sores, their cries reduced to gurgling rasps. The bombs truly left nothing untouched.</p><p>You fumble with the clasp on your own tags, but eventually they come free, joining Danse’s in your fist. It took you ages to appreciate your independence, and you threw it all away the moment you stepped onto the Prydwen’s flight deck. So quick to put another collar around your neck. Was it worth it?</p><p>Anthony called you not long after your retirement. It was a surprise; you never contacted him while he was in prison, and you were already a year into your enlistment when he got out. After that, it didn’t feel appropriate to reach out to your disgraced deserter of a brother while you were in the service, and he clearly felt the same—to your knowledge, he never tried to talk to you until that day in 2074, when you batted Nate’s offered arm of support away and hobbled to the ringing phone on the other side of the living room. Over twelve years had passed since his trial, but he still sounded identical to the young man you watched leave for basic: his voice deep and resonant like your father’s, but with a passionate fervency First Sergeant Gutierrez never possessed. He had read your name in the papers, he said, then made a flat joke about the media’s obsession with your family.</p><p>“It’s all bullshit,” you told him.</p><p>“But you’re a hero, Maria,” he insisted; it sounded like an accusation. “That’s what they’re all saying, right?”</p><p>You waved it off with an awkward chuckle, loathing the very concept, the larger-than-life mythological deity the news had made of you since word of your capture hit the radio waves and printing presses. But Anthony pressed on relentlessly, demanding to know what the Army had asked you to do and scoffing when you claimed it was confidential.</p><p>“Did you like it when they made you murder those Canadian protesters?” he taunted, viciously. “Did you tell yourself you were serving your country? Just doing your patriotic duty?”</p><p>“I wasn’t even there!” you shot back, appalled. As you were quick to inform him, you were “serving your country” by finishing Special Forces training in the Southeast Commonwealth during the riots and subsequent annexation of Canada in ‘72. Privately, you considered General Babcock’s assault on Canada a repulsive act, but you kept that detail to yourself. No reason to throw more fuel on Anthony’s fire.</p><p>"I couldn't believe it when I found out you were a career soldier. My baby sister, shooting commies in Alaska." You could almost hear him grimace. "You could've been anything you wanted, you realize that? <em>I</em> was supposed to follow in Dad's footsteps. Not you."</p><p>The girl from the courtroom roused from slumber. "Anthony, I only enlisted because <em>you</em> fucked up. I've spent my whole life trying to clean up the mess you made of our family, all because you were a goddamn coward."</p><p>He snorted. "A coward? Abandoning my post was the bravest thing I've ever done. You know what's cowardly? Spending ten years letting someone else tell you what to do—when to eat, where to shit, who to kill. Obedience comes with a price. You trade a piece of your soul for the security of not needing to think for yourself."</p><p>Nate was rubbing a hand across the back of his neck, his face the picture of concern. You turned away and, lowering your voice, hissed into the receiver, "Don't you <em>dare</em> lecture me. You have no fucking idea what I've done or what I've been through."</p><p>“Was it worth it? Are you proud?” Anthony asked after a pause, his tone a mirror of your own.</p><p>“It was,” you said. “And I am.”</p><p>There was silence on the other end of the line for a while. Then he said, “You know what I realized after I got to Anchorage? We mean <em>nothing</em> to them. Not me, not you. Not even Dad. Not a damn thing. I really thought I was gonna be part of something great, you know? But I was just a tool for politicians too chickenshit to fight their own battles. And so were you. The Army chewed you up and spit you out when you were no longer useful. Soon as they figured out you couldn’t stack bodies for them anymore, they got rid of you, didn’t they? I know you won’t believe me now. You’re still brainwashed. But someday you’ll see—”</p><p>You slammed the receiver into the cradle so hard you cracked the plastic.</p><p>“Was it worth it?” you whisper to the ocean. “Am I proud?”</p><p>You stand and approach the edge of the water, letting the waves almost lap against the toes of your boots. There were a few more phone calls between you and your brother, but they didn’t go much better than the first. The chasm between you was just too vast to traverse. Your calls grew scarcer, only one or two a year, eventually fizzling out completely. And then the bombs fell a week after Anthony’s 37th birthday, and none of it mattered anymore.</p><p>The chains of the two sets of holotags dangle between your fingers. Their tags sway gently in the breeze, two squares of blue dancing in the darkness.</p><p>You spare a glance at the Prydwen before returning to the inky blackness of the ocean before you. You roll the tags into your fist, chains and all, and throw them as hard as you can. They hit the water with barely a splash, then sink beneath the waves.</p><p>You face west and begin to walk. The Prydwen grows steadily smaller behind you.</p><p>Now your family has two deserters.</p>
<hr/><p>The sun is just starting to break the horizon at your back when you arrive in Diamond City. The earliest vendors meander about, yawning as they set up their stands. You silently pass them by and slip into the alley that holds your tiny home.</p><p>Cait is in bed sleeping, curled into a ball in her usual spot on the left side of the mattress, like she deliberately left space for you to join her. She jolts awake when you shut the door, immediately reaching for the pistol she keeps on the nightstand.</p><p>“It’s just me,” you say quickly, and her hand drops, accompanied by a heavy sigh of relief.</p><p>“Could’ve knocked first,” she grumbles.</p><p>“Sorry. Didn’t think you’d be here.” You drop your pack to the floor and unstrap your weapons, placing them on the table like an illicit arms deal. The chair might be a wiser choice, but the bed is too tempting, and you take a seat on the edge of the mattress to untie your boots.</p><p>You can feel Cait’s eyes on your back. “Why wouldn’t I be? I live here, too,” she says.</p><p>Can’t really argue with that. You slip your boots off and turn your head just enough to catch Cait in your peripheral vision, painted in streaks of pallid light, the blankets pulled up to her chin. “May I?” you ask, patting the space behind you, between you.</p><p>“Sure…?” Her inflection tilts up at the end, half statement, half question, as though she can’t fathom why you’re asking.</p><p>You leave your pants and jacket in a puddle on the floor next to your boots and slide under the covers and into the residual warmth from Cait’s body, and this shitty mattress and shittier pillow have never felt so luxurious. You want to sleep. God, do you want to sleep. You want to sleep the way you used to, with her chest pressed to your back, her arms wrapped around you like you are the only thing in the world worth holding onto. But you don’t touch her, and she doesn’t touch you. The two foot gap between you stretches wide, as infinite as the difference between the woman who entered the Institute, fueled by wrathful hope, and the one in this bed, running on fumes. You watch the rays of dawn creep over your arms and down to the floor until Cait breaks the silence.</p><p>“So, if you’re willin’ to share a bed with me again, I’m guessing you’ve stopped thinkin’ I’m a synth,” she says lightly, and something touches your back—her fingertips, gliding over your shirt and up to your shoulder, an offered truce and careful inquiry.</p><p>You answer it with a sigh. “I never should have in the first place. I let the Institute’s bullshit get the better of me, and you got caught in the crossfire. You didn’t deserve that.” She didn’t deserve it then, and she doesn’t deserve it now, two feet from a lover who can’t even look at her. “I’m sorry, Cait.”</p><p>It was so much easier in the 108th. So much easier when you knew who the enemy was by the color of their uniform and the flags they carried, when all you had to do was point and shoot and nameless soldiers fell to the ground like so many tin cans at the gun range. But then you joined ODA 248, and the enemy changed shape, wore the face of a friend. Then came the Brotherhood of Steel, where the enemy itself—its nationality, its values, its hatred of you and your allies—can no longer be cleanly defined, only accepted as truth from the mouth of their messiah.</p><p>“They sure fucked with your head, didn’t they?” Cait says softly; there’s no jest in the question.</p><p>“Who?” The list of people who have successfully fucked with your head seems to grow longer by the day.</p><p>“The Institute.”</p><p>“Yeah.” Not like there’s any other possible response. “Guess so.”</p><p>“You really pissed me off, you know,” she says, as if to herself. Her thumb strokes the back of your neck, the rest of her fingers buried in your hair. “But I couldn’t stay mad. Can’t blame you, honestly. Hard enough knowin’ who to trust around here, even without the Institute crankin’ out copies of people.”</p><p>You roll over. Cait watches you with dilatory, half-lidded eyes, tugged too soon from sleep. There’s a raw spot on her lip where she’s been worrying at it. Her hair is mussed, a copper cascade across the faded pillowcase. You reach into the space between your bodies and tangle her fingers with yours.</p><p>“I trust you,” you tell her, and it’s the truth. Because you always have, even when reason left you, long past the point when the lines between enemy and ally blurred.</p><p>There’s a small catch in her breathing, then a shy smile curves her lips. “I trust you, too,” she says. You believe her.</p><p>Cait’s face flickers in and out of sight as your eyelids flutter shut, but you’re lured away from the siren’s call of sleep by the sound of her voice: “You listened to what I told you, right? You didn’t do anything stupid?”</p><p>You mentally wince and open your eyes again. “Define stupid,” you say, cautiously.</p><p>“You didn’t”—she hesitates, like she’s afraid to ask, or know the answer—“do somethin’ like… what you did before? Christ, I don’t even want to say it.”</p><p>Ah. Drugs. You considered it, once Cait left and you were alone in your house with a heart full of anguish and a floor full of broken cigarettes. Doctor Sun was just around the corner, after all, probably missing the jingle of your caps in his pockets, and the Dugout Inn wasn’t much farther. If you wanted, you could’ve bought enough Med-X and moonshine to numb yourself right into a sweet, permanent oblivion, and no one would’ve been the wiser. Instead, you practiced a different sort of self-destruction and marched to the Prydwen.</p><p>“No, I didn’t,” you say, and the tension melts from Cait’s expression. “Did you?”</p><p>“Wanted to. Thought about it.” She sighs, and you squeeze her hand. “I thought about it a lot. But I swear on—hell, whatever’s worth swearin’ on—I didn’t. I promise. Even knowin’ a dozen places in Diamond City to make a pickup, I couldn’t do it. Somethin’ in me told me I couldn’t just—”</p><p>“Throw it all away.”</p><p>“Aye.”</p><p>She wouldn’t give up on herself, or you. You feel a hot surge of mingled affection and shame. <em>You</em> were ready to throw it all away, here in this room four—or was it five?—days ago. Cait was a fighter to the core, but you were all too willing to throw in the towel, to surrender. When the Institute’s relay broke you apart and put you back together in the shadow of CIT, you surrendered to paranoia. Deep in the bowels of the Glowing Sea, you surrendered to death. And in the abandoned listening post, you surrendered to obedience. Anthony’s voice twists in your mind: <em>was it worth it?</em></p><p>“So what <em>did</em> you do these last few days?” Cait asks.</p><p>You shift your eyes to a spot on the wall above her shoulder. “A few missions for the Brotherhood,” you reply, praying she won’t press for details.</p><p>She does, of course. “Pfft. Didn’t I tell you to stop playin’ errand-girl for those arseholes? What was it this time? They make you scrub their blimp with a toothbrush or somethin’?”</p><p>“Not quite. Bomb retrieval from a storage facility in the Glowing Sea.”</p><p>“Jesus. What for?”</p><p>“To arm a giant robot,” you say, thinking of Maxson’s excitement when he gave the orders. Like a boy on Christmas morning.</p><p>“A giant robot,” Cait echoes flatly.</p><p>“Yep.”</p><p>“So, Maxie’s giant fuckin’ robot is just gonna… bomb the Institute? How’s that supposed to work?”</p><p>“Not sure,” you admit. Though, based on previous experience, you have an inkling. “But you can get a hell of a lot done with enough bombs.”</p><p>“Shite,” Cait mutters a few seconds later, when your secondary meaning sinks in. “Let’s hope the Brotherhood doesn’t cause another apocalypse, eh? Don’t think the planet can handle two.”</p><p>You’re not sure you can, either.</p><p>Diamond City starts to come alive for the day: the muffled shouts of vendors leak through the gaps in the window, accompanied by the salty and vaguely plastic odor of Takahashi’s noodles. But in this place, this room, there’s only the two of you. Two women forgotten by the world, abandoned by god, left for dead. The lack of commonalities you share with the Brotherhood are made up tenfold by what you share with Cait—the bitterness and distrust, the intensity of your loyalty for those few deemed worthy of it. You trust her. You love her.</p><p>You need to tell her.</p><p>“There was more,” you say, close to a whisper.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“When I went to the Institute, the Brotherhood had me pull—something, some sort of encrypted data from one of their terminals onto a holotape. I don’t even know what all was on there, but apparently it had a list of synths. Their DNA profiles. The scribes decrypted it, and—” You fall silent, your confession halted.</p><p>“What happened?” Cait asks, brow knitted with concern. Her fingers massage your hand, knuckle to wrist, like she can coax your words out through touch.</p><p>Inhale, exhale, repeat. “There was a match. For Danse.”</p><p>Her fingers go still. “He’s a synth?”</p><p>“Was. He ran, Maxson sent me to track him down, and I… killed him.”</p><p>For a moment, Cait looks like she’s considering a morbid joke, but before she can say anything, you start crying. The tears come on hard and fast, and they don’t stop. Grief overwhelms you, wracking your body with hideous, shuddering gasps and sobs, so strong you barely register Cait’s embrace when she pulls you to her. You weep for the fratricide of your brother in arms. You weep for the man you imagined your son would become when he was just a baby in your arms. You weep for your husband, for your team, for every single life cut down around you, cut down <em>by</em> you, while you—inexplicably, unjustifiably—survive, dragged down by the memories of a war that ended two centuries ago.</p><p>You cough and splutter, choking on your own tears and snot. Years of pain are scraped from your insides and forced out of you till you’re an empty husk, whimpering against Cait’s shoulder while she murmurs wordless comforting sounds and rubs your back, an instinct you didn’t know she had.</p><p>“I don’t understand,” she says when you’re finally done.</p><p>Neither do you. God, you don’t even understand who you are anymore. What is a soldier without an enemy, without a war to fight? War has given you so many names: Sergeant, Knight, Paladin… when will you just be Maria Gabriela Gutierrez, and nothing more? You thought you were close to finding the answer in the three years after the Army threw you away, but the war went on without your presence on the field: on the television, at the military checkpoints, in the empty spaces of your ration-restricted cupboards and the tear-streaked faces of each day’s new widows. The war defined everyone’s lives, soldier and civilian alike, just as it ended them with its culmination. But it didn’t end yours. Your existence is an anomaly.</p><p><em>We are going to war</em>, Maxson declared, and he sent you to battle, a place you thought you understood. You shouldered your rifle and fired, just as you were taught, but when the fog of war lifted, there were only paper targets, full of holes and fluttering in the wind. Was that how Danse felt, too?</p><p>“He didn’t know who he was,” you say, voice coarse. “This whole time, he thought he was human.”</p><p> Cait doesn’t bother to stifle her snort of disbelief. “You believed that?”</p><p>“He had no reason to lie. And even if he was, it didn’t matter. He asked me to kill him.”</p><p>“Then you shouldn’t feel bad about it. If you ask me, you were doin’ him a favor. Let’s say he was tellin’ the truth—finding out you’re one of the things you’ve spent years killin’? I’d want to off meself, too. Except I’d actually have the bollocks to do it, instead of makin’ someone else pull the trigger.”</p><p>“I don’t know.”</p><p>“You did the right thing,” she insists. “Synths aren’t natural.”</p><p>It seems absurd to apply the term “natural” to anything in an irradiated wasteland. Then again, this wasteland is all Cait’s ever known. “Neither am I,” you counter. “Unless you consider two hundred years of cryosleep ‘natural.’”</p><p>“Oh, Maria. It’s not the same,” she chides, exasperated, and presses a kiss to your forehead. “Come on love, we’re both too damn tired. Let’s just sleep.”</p><p>You roll over again and curve your body against Cait’s, but sleep eludes you, chased away by the snarls of anxious thoughts. The Brotherhood will figure out you’ve gone AWOL soon enough, and there aren’t any more courts to try you in or prisons in which to lock you away. Given your value, Maxson will probably attempt to press you into service, and if you dare to resist, you’ll share Danse’s fate. And what about the Institute? Father and the other scientists made it clear they intend for you to join them in their underground world, as if you’re the missing piece in their collection of antiques—to be put behind glass like a rare piece of china, taken out for special occasions like blood draws and skin scrapes and god knows what else whenever they need more pre-war DNA. They know where you are; they’ve known since the start, when Vault 111’s elevator brought you into the blinding light of the post-apocalypse. It’s only a matter of time until they catch you. And who will protect you then?</p><p>When sleep comes for you at last, you dream of an old-fashioned operating amphitheater, where white-coated Institute scientists watch from the seats while Maxson takes a scalpel to your face, peeling back your skin to reveal a skull made of metal and plastic.</p>
<hr/><p>Sanctuary Hills has changed in the months you’ve been away. More people now call it home, their farm plots covering what used to be perfectly manicured backyards, and the cul-de-sac fills with the sounds of their renovations—the pounds of hammers and the scrapes of saws, patching roofs and sweeping up refuse. A child runs past, no older than five, chasing and snatching up a baseball before it rolls under a hollowed-out car, and your heart briefly lurches with an unknown mix of emotions.</p><p>Garvey is where you expect: helping another Minuteman hold up a beam that will become part of a new ceiling while Sturges nails it into place. His back is soaked with sweat and his arms tremble with the effort, but a tireless grin lights up his face—a grin that doesn’t dim at all when he notices you.</p><p>“Alright, beam’s in place! You should be good to let it go now,” Sturges calls from atop his makeshift scaffolding, and Garvey and the other man let their arms drop with relieved groans. The beam, thankfully, stays put, though it looks a tad crooked from where you’re standing.</p><p>“Man,” Garvey says, stepping off the collection of cinder blocks he’s using as a stepladder, “the sun feels a lot hotter when you’re building houses under it.” He grabs a rag hanging off the back of a chair and mops his brow with it. “Was it like this when you lived here?”</p><p>“Not really. We’d still have snow on the ground in April sometimes,” you reply, and follow Garvey to a picnic table set in the shade of a corrugated metal overhang. You don’t mind the heat; the lack of snow is one of the very few things you appreciate about the future.</p><p>“Really? I’ve never seen snow before. Sounds pretty nice right about now, though.” He sets a bottle down in front of you. Nuka Cola. <em>Warm</em> Nuka Cola, in this land without refrigeration… or snow. “It’s good to see you,” he says, twisting the cap off his own bottle and leaving it on the table.</p><p>You open yours, stick the cap in your pocket, and take a swig. The warm, syrupy soda has yet to feel refreshing to you no matter how many times you try, but its flavor always brings a rush of sentimentality. Your first time drinking it after your escape from the vault left you fighting back tears in the middle of Diamond City.</p><p>“Likewise.” You sip your drink, trying your best to avoid what you came here to do, but Garvey sniffs it out.</p><p>“Is there something you need?”</p><p>Your bottle hits the table with a thud. “Is it that obvious?” you mutter, and a smile crinkles the corners of Garvey’s eyes. You stare at the red Nuka cap in front of you, and the words come out in a rush: “Look, I know I haven’t given you any reason to do anything for me. I’ve never done shit for you or the Minutemen; I haven’t even been up here in ages—”</p><p>“Maria,” Garvey interrupts, reaching his hand out and letting it fall just short of where yours stay grasped tightly around your bottle, “it’s okay. You help people because they need it, not because you owe them something. Nobody’s keeping score. So, what can I do for you?”</p><p><em>Are you proud?</em> It no longer matters. You push your pride away, and you ask for help.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Zygote</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter contains details of pregnancy and drug use.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He is not your son.</p><p>He is a copy, a pastiche of who your son might have been, if only you weren’t too busy being unconscious in a cryopod to see it. The body is right: he has Nate’s eyes, wide and blue, and your unruly black hair. His complexion is somewhere in between—darker than Nate’s, a bit paler than yours. He looks so much like you imagined he would, like the Institute formed him from your cribside daydreams instead of your real son’s DNA. Sometimes, just for a moment, when you see him from afar, playing with the other kids in Sanctuary Hills or taking apart salvaged junk with that little toolset Sturges gave him, you forget he isn’t really yours. Your mind concocts a split-second fantasy where those extra sixty years in cryostasis never passed, where your bloody vengeance on Kellogg returned your infant son to you, where he grew into the boy you now watch from a distance. Then you remember, and the truth rends your heart.</p><p>He is not your son. He is a synth.</p><p>The body might be right, but his mind is an artificial construct. He thinks what the Institute believes a ten year old boy should think, what they have programmed his brain to understand—including the idea that you are his mother. Despite your efforts, that one has irrevocably taken root. The others say he asks them where you are when you make trips south for supplies, and his face lights up when you return, if you make the mistake of coming close enough to see it. You try not to. If it takes a village to raise a child, you’d rather let the village handle this one. But you are the one he wants.</p><p>He calls you “mom.” And each time you hear it—the word your real son was weeks away from babbling before he was stolen from you—it takes everything in you not to fall to pieces.</p><p>The first time was in the corridors of the Institute. His shout was barely perceptible over the never-ending wail of alarms as you led Garvey and his Minutemen back to the teleporter. You turned at the sound, rifle at the ready, to see the synth boy from your initial visit there running toward you, his tear-streaked face visible through your scope.</p><p>“Hold your fire!” you yelled, and lowered your gun. Tactically speaking, it was a stupid move—but if the Institute would go low enough to attack you with the child replica of your own son, you supposed you had it coming.</p><p>The synth wasn’t deterred by the small army before him. “Mom!” he called again, then stumbled past them all, pushing the barrel of your rifle aside to wrap his arms around your waist.</p><p>“What? No!” Your heart, already overloaded with adrenaline, seized in your chest. You slipped from his grasp and backed up against the wall, feeling like you were ten thousand feet up and hurtling toward earth without a parachute. They couldn’t do this to you. Not now, not like this.</p><p>“But…” His face crumpled in confusion, the same way it did when he first saw you—when you pressed your palms to the glass cage they kept him in and begged for someone to let him out. When you thought he was your flesh and blood, not an artificial construct left as bait in an experiment you never asked to be a part of.</p><p>“What the hell is this?” Cait asked, stepping closer. “Didn’t we just see your son upstairs?”</p><p>You did. You had asked Garvey to guard the entrance to the scientists’ residencies, leaving you and Cait alone with Shaun. He was, as he so bluntly informed you, dying. Some aggressive form of cancer. The Institute could build synthetic humans from vats of chemicals, but they couldn’t keep their director from coughing up gobs of red-streaked phlegm while he feebly chastised you from the confines of his bed. You had felt an awful sort of peace then, looking down at him: for the first time, you saw a stranger instead of the baby you had rocked to sleep at night. <em>There was no other way this could end</em>, you said. And you left him to die alone.</p><p>“That was the real Shaun. This one’s a synth copy,” you explained. You wished he would stop staring at you.</p><p>“I’m not a synth!” He started to cry again, fat tears rolling down his cheeks. “And I’m not a copy of anyone. I’m Shaun! I’m your <em>son!</em> Please, Mom,”—he sniffled and rubbed his eyes and looked so much, too much, like a scared little boy—“don’t leave me here.”</p><p>The pulse charge was securely nestled into the Institute’s reactor core. Once you went through the teleporter and hit the detonator button, the Institute and everything else in a half-mile radius would be vaporized. What was one more synth’s death? After all you’d done, how was this one any different?</p><p>You looked up, over the synth’s head. Cait was watching you, not him; apprehensively, like there was an actual dilemma here, like it was provoking an opinion she—for once—couldn’t bring herself to express. The alarms carried on around you, all electric shrieks and flashing lights, and you could tell Garvey and his men were getting antsy, even though he was keeping them a respectful distance away.</p><p>“He’s not…” The rest of the sentence died on your lips. He wasn’t what? Yours? Real? He was near enough for you to see the birthmark on his neck—the same one you used to circle your thumb over while he nursed.</p><p>“He’s the only family you’ve got left,” Cait said quietly.</p><p>You told the synth to get in the teleporter.</p>
<hr/><p>You watch him take apart a toaster while you stand in what used to be the Whitfield’s living room. It makes you feel like a creep, spying on him across the street through a window like some peeping Tom, but you keep finding yourself like this—observing him, inadvertently and inevitably finding connections.</p><p>Abandoning your hovel in Diamond City for a new hovel in Sanctuary Hills was not an easy choice to make; practicality won you over in the end. The Brotherhood of Steel will be looking for their prized paladin, and you doubt they’re the sort to knock first before entering. This is a much more defensible position than Diamond City’s marketplace. But it’s not a panacea. Despite the relative security, this can’t be your permanent home—you’ve never been good at staying in one place for too long, and more importantly, Garvey and his men don’t deserve the burden of your desertion. </p><p>You consider a life beyond the Commonwealth, of overriding childhood memories of your many homes across the United States with the unknown realities of the modern Wasteland. Cait would follow you if you asked, you’re sure of it. She has no ties worth keeping here.</p><p>The boy, though. He complicates things.</p><p>You learn more about him each day, whether you want to or not. He’s a tinkerer like Nate, opening up junk for the sheer thrill of discovery, leaving scraps and screws all over. You were still tripping over pieces of the biometric scanner he tore into last week. The toaster, however, is proving difficult to work with; he sets his screwdriver down and rubs a hand over the back of his neck, looking so much like Nate you momentarily forget how to breathe.</p><p>But he’s not your son, you remind yourself for the millionth time. He is not Nate’s little boy.</p><p>Oh, did Nate ever pray for a boy. His father-son dreams were strangely traditional for a family who tended to be anything but—he declared he would teach Shaun the fine art of being a man: baseball games and blue jeans, working on cars and going on fishing trips. When you asked Nate if <em>his</em> father had ever done anything like that with him, he just laughed. <em>He tried</em>, he said, grinning sheepishly. <em>None of it ever stuck</em>.</p><p>You, on the other hand, wanted a girl. Boys were trouble, your mother always said. According to her, you were much easier to raise than your brother. You doubted Anthony’s problems had much to do with his gender, but her words still echoed in your head when the pregnancy was confirmed. Your life had seen fit to provide plenty of trouble on its own; the last thing you needed was more.</p><p>Regardless of what your child turned out to be, both you and Nate wanted one more than anything. That want didn’t hit you until a year after your retirement, but when it did, it sunk its teeth in and refused to let go. In a world where nothing felt certain or safe, you craved permanency, security. Creation instead of endless destruction. And maybe—a much less lofty ideal, admittedly—you just wanted something to focus on.</p><p>You absently spin your wedding band around your finger and watch him pick up his screwdriver again for another go at the toaster. Was that a good enough reason to have a child? You’d heard worse: people thinking a baby could save their failing marriage, or getting knocked up because their parents expected them to. Wanting a purpose, something beyond reliving Alaska in the corner of your bedroom while you chain smoked and waited for your breakfast of vodka and pills to kick in, seemed pretty damn good by comparison.</p><p>Unlike you, Nate always wanted to be a parent. He planned everything out and bought a shelf’s worth of books, like <em>he</em> was the one getting a syringefull of spunk shot into him at monthly intervals… well, at least not for <em>that</em> particular purpose. He’d stand on the other side of the bedroom door and crack stupid jokes while you lay on the bed, ass up and feet in the air, feeling like a total fucking idiot.</p><p>You slip the ring off and cradle it in your palm. The metal is warm against your skin. God, you miss him.</p><p>It took a few tries, but eventually your romantic evenings of candlelit dinners, smutty magazines, and turkey basters paid off, and you were pregnant. It was the most bizarre feeling. For once, you were adding a life instead of taking it. At night when you couldn’t sleep, you’d press your hands to your belly, long before you were even showing, and think about that minuscule clump of cells a few inches beneath your palms until the chaos in your brain settled. </p><p>The vodka breakfasts stopped. So did the cigarettes. The Med-X, though… that was harder. The docs had cut your prescription off six months after they bolted your spine back together, but your body didn’t get the memo; it continued to send bolts of white-hot pain down your legs, so brutal you couldn’t walk without sobbing whenever they struck. You suffered through it, to the point of fantasizing about the things you could do with the handgun you kept locked in the gun safe, until a chem dealer living in Sanctuary Hills saw you limping at a neighborhood party and brazenly offered his services. You didn’t hesitate to accept them.</p><p>You tried to taper down those first few months. You <em>tried</em>. But during the second half of your pregnancy, your injury and the growing child within you seemingly conspired to make your life unbearable. The pain was breathtaking, overwhelming, and you only knew one way to fight it: calling the dealer, who said nothing about your increasingly obvious condition each time he handed over a new pack. Any guilt you might have felt was obliterated in the face of sheer relief. Those damn pills felt so innocuous, didn’t they? Far more innocent than jabbing a needle in your veins. And even though you’d sweat and shake and puke between doses, you never made the connection; you assumed it was some new nightmarish symptom of pregnancy, maybe even a holdover from the war. Funny how much clearer things get in hindsight.</p><p>For eight months, you pretended to have everything under control. And then Shaun was born. Four weeks early, and he would not stop crying, and he trembled in your arms like his tiny body was going to fall apart, and you knew exactly why.</p><p>The hospital kept him for two weeks. You went home and flushed the rest of the pills down the toilet.</p><p>Another child, a girl—one of the Minutemen’s, you think—comes over to inspect his handiwork. He doesn’t say much to her; he just keeps poking at the toaster, which has now decided to cooperate and reveal its innards. Quiet, stoic, focused. Like you. That thought feels like sandpaper, and you turn away from the window.</p>
<hr/><p>“Mom!”</p><p>You jolt awake from a dead sleep to find a child clinging to your arm.</p><p>“What’s wrong?” you mumble, the words sliding together—<em>wazrong</em>—while you fumble for your glasses. The hands on your arm are cold and wet.</p><p>“The sky! Can’t you hear it?”</p><p>Your senses flick on slowly, like the lights in a house with rat-gnawed wiring. It’s the middle of the night, you can tell immediately; the only illumination comes from the two lanterns you keep burning on either side of the bed to stave off Cait’s fear of the dark (and maybe yours, too). Your hearing turns on next: something between a rustle and a pound is beating steadily against the roof and the window. Then it’s blasted away by a boom so loud it shakes what’s left of the Whitfield’s refurbished walls and rattles the window in its frame.</p><p>Shaun—it’s him; of course it’s him—cries out and grabs you tighter, climbing into bed to squeeze in beside you. He’s soaked to the bone and shivering, from cold or fear or both. Sleepy delirium sends your arms wrapping around him and presses your cheek to the sodden crown on his head.</p><p>“Shh… it’s okay, honey,” you hear yourself murmur, too drowsy to fight the impulse.</p><p>“What’s happening?” A flash of lightning paints the bedroom white for a heartbeat, and he flinches, tucking his head into the crook of your arm. You look down; he has the same squared-off fold in his left ear that you do. Dammit. Your resigned sigh is lost under the storm pummeling the house.</p><p>“<em>Jesus</em>,” Cait grumbles behind you. “It’s just some goddamn rain.” You turn to give her a playful shove; she mutters something decidedly inappropriate for a ten year-old to hear and rolls over to face the wall, pulling the blankets up over her head.</p><p>Despite her thinly-veiled suggestion in the Institute to take Shaun with you, Cait seems just as unsure about him as you. Her messages are often conflicting: one day she’ll drag you off to Diamond City, imploring you to “let the others deal with the synth.” The next, she’s scolding you, demanding you “quit ignorin’ your damn son.” You’ve kept it from getting under your skin—if anything, it’s Cait’s own rotten childhood rising to the surface, generational patterns she’s struggling to break. As for Shaun himself, she steers clear of him, and he seems to respect that. You shudder to think what would happen if he ever called <em>her</em> “mom.”</p><p>It’s a process, you tell yourself. Everything is a process.</p><p>You wait for Shaun to quit hiding and sit up, then explain, “It’s a thunderstorm. They happen sometimes up here. It won’t hurt you.” Probably won’t, anyway. You don’t dare tell him about getting struck by lightning. Or radstorms.</p><p>“Is it the whole sky?” Shaun asks. “Everywhere in the world? I tried to find the edge of it but there was still water coming down, even by that building across the bridge.”</p><p>A sudden burst of anxiety coils in your gut before you can push it away. “You went all the way to the Red Rocket?”</p><p>“Yeah.” He shrugs, his shoulder bumping against your arm. “But then I got scared, so I came back here.” Another crash of thunder, but he stops himself from jumping this time. “Why does it have to be so <em>loud?</em> Is the sky breaking?”</p><p>“No, it’s just… weather. It changes. You know, like the clouds?” He nods. You’re sure he’s learned that much about the surface; you’ve caught him on his back in the middle of someone’s tato garden sometimes, enraptured by the clouds as they float across the sky. “Sometimes they get water in them and turn dark. And then the water comes out as rain. The loud sounds are thunder. The bright flashes are lightning. Nothing’s breaking.”</p><p>“What makes them?”</p><p>“Uh…” You try to remember if you ever learned it in school and come up short. Like most things, it passed through your adolescent mind’s sieve, deemed irrelevant to the life you planned on leading. “Pressure changes or something. I don’t know.”</p><p>“Why?” Shaun asks. He seems calmer now, staring at the streaks of water trickling down the window pane with new fascination.</p><p>“Why what?”</p><p>“Why do we need rain?”</p><p>“To water the plants,” you answer automatically. Not that there are many of those left. But nature carries on, shining its sun and pouring its rain over dead earth, humanity’s influence be damned. “And it’s a little safer to drink than the river water.”</p><p>“Oh.” A pause. “It’s really strange here.”</p><p>“You get used to it,” you reply, and you’re not sure if that’s meant for him or for you.</p><p>The light flickers and sways with the lanterns’ flames, filling the room with dancing shadows and the faint smell of burning kerosene. The rain pours down unabated. A more awake, responsible part of your brain tells you to check for leaks in the ceiling come morning. You shush it and let the humid night air and the steady breathing to your left and right envelop you, until everything else falls away. Your eyes start to close.</p><p>Your arm, though, is still around Shaun. He notices it, too, and wriggles out of your embrace, offering you the small, embarrassed smile of a boy who needs his mother more than the world thinks he ought to. He watches you with Nate’s eyes, the same as his predecessor, but they reflect affection, not hatred. So different from the old man who cursed you from his deathbed: <em>it’s hard to believe I’m related to you.</em></p><p>Was it your fault, what happened to him? If you could leap centuries ahead in a frozen blink, couldn’t you do the opposite—go back in time and see the moment fate decided you didn’t deserve your child? Was it the first illicit dose of Med-X? The first time you fired your weapon at the enemy? That decision in the courtroom to enlist, a lifetime ago? Did the blood on your hands preclude you from motherhood?</p><p>You look at him—at Shaun. In the red-orange glow of the lantern light, the timelines merge, and the boy in front of you slides into the gap between Shaun the infant and Shaun the man, and it no longer feels so terribly incongruous. Synth or not, half his DNA is yours. Isn’t that enough? Maybe this is the chance to right your countless wrongs. Maybe this—he—is how you atone.</p><p>You reach out and take his hand. He is not your son, until he is.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I've never been very good at creating fully realized characters from nothing. I need to spend time with them before I know who they really are, and Maria was no exception. I knew before starting the game, based on my friends' urging and a brief perusal of the Wiki, that Cait was going to be her love interest of choice, which provided the basis for her hardass, mercenary personality, but that was it. Then as I played, I started filling in details: the military background, her family, the drug use. And then I finished up Fort Hagen and thought maybe she was a little scared of synths. And things just fell together from there. This fic largely reflects my playthrough, including the outcome of Blind Betrayal and when I had her leave the BoS for the Minutemen (I literally walked out during Kells's dialogue to prevent triggering the Tactical Thinking quest lol). I thought it would be fun to write about, and, well... here we are!</p><p>The choice to write this in second person POV felt obvious to me from the start. A lot of readers are uncomfortable with how "close" second person feels, and that discomfort is exactly what I wanted to evoke. I knew Maria was going to have some (okay, maybe a lot of) unpleasant parts to her, so I wanted to plop my readers down right in her head for every painful step of the way. I hope it worked! A big thank you to everyone who's gotten this far, and an extra grande XXXL thank you to my friends from the Retreat, who have listened to my inane babbling about FO4 since May. Thanks for all the tears ;)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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